


Show me heaven or kingdom come

by PunkyNemo (TheVampireCat)



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: 2019 Daredevil exchange, Angst, Blasphemy, Canon-Typical Violence, Confession, Curtis Hoyle/Dinah Madani - secondary ship, F/M, Karen and her secrets, Religion, Roman Catholicism, Slow Burn, Smut, Two timelines, and then some more angst, kastle - Freeform, smut with lots and lots and lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2020-05-03
Packaged: 2020-09-27 02:23:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 83,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20400124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheVampireCat/pseuds/PunkyNemo
Summary: When Frank Castle goes looking for absolution, the last place he expects to find it is in a church. Much like clarity, forgiveness can come from the strangest of places.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Daredevil exchange gift for christopherevanses on tumblr. 
> 
> A few notes:  
1\. The prompt was "religion" which is a super interesting prompt for Kastle IMO especially when you consider Frank's Catholic background and how the concepts of sin and absolution play into that.  
2\. It's even more interesting when you consider Karen and her past and how exactly that relates to her and Frank and what it means for them when he finds out about her sins.  
3\. This first chapter I have posted now was meant to be the whole thing and then I realised I wanted to write more - so I did. I have one short chapter still to write, but I will be posting new chapters regularly - there will be about four or five.  
4\. I have tagged blasphemy because I do feel anyone who is staunchly religious probably won't like this much because of the concepts and juxtapositions I have used, however this is by no means an anti-religion screed, I just feel it is best to be safe in these matters.  
5\. In some ways this feels like it's a mirror of What We Find In The Shadows, updated to incorporate elements of DDS3 and TP2.  
6\. Title is from Jamie N Commons "The Preacher" which I would recommend as a really appropriate Frank Castle song. Thank you to CaptainKilly on tumblr for introducing me to it.  
7\. Hope you enjoy. Let me know in the comments if you do.

_ "I wanted to be a priest once. Went to catechism and everything." _

_ He's standing at her window, glass of Merlot in his hand and his eyes are sparkling, lips turned up in a smile that's more than half sneer. _

_ "Me?” he chuckles. “A priest. Granting absolution. Demanding penance. What a goddamn joke." _

_ He shakes his head ruefully, sips his wine and stares out over the city towards St Jude’s Cathedral. It’s a surprisingly clear night for this time of year and, from where she lingers behind him, she can see its steeple with its dark cross and wrought iron finishes; the gargoyles that would have scared her when she was a little girl, but not now that she knows what monsters really are. _

_ She takes a step closer. Orange-red lights from police cruisers reflect against the black stone, turning it purple and green like a bruise. _

_ The bells are ringing very loudly. _

_ Mass. Not quite midnight - it's not _ quite _ Christmas - but close enough. _

_ She glances at him again, lets her eyes roam from the dimples at his waist up his spine to his shoulders where the muscles bunch under his skin. She wonders if there's part of him that yearns to go again - to do it right this time - make like the good Catholic he is and pay his dues... absolve his guilt. _

_ There's not enough absolution in the world for The Punisher. _

_ "Father Francis Castiglione," she says and she isn't surprised by how easily the words slip off her tongue, how her mouth moves to accommodate them so they're sharp and crystal clear. _

_ "Yeah…" he shrugs, but his smile stays where it is. Mocking. Disbelieving. Incredulous. "You believe that?" _

_ Yes. Yes she does. It's a remarkably easy thing to believe. _

_ Father Francis Castiglione grimly dishing out punishments for crimes big and small, gritting his teeth against the redundant apologies that he neither accepts not believes. _

I'm only human. She had it coming. I didn't mean it. It wasn't my fault. It was an accident. I made a mistake.

_ Hail Marys. Penance. Forgiveness. _

Be better. Be better, _ he whispers under his breath even though he knows it's futile. _

_ It wouldn't have lasted. She knows that much too. He's stubborn to a fault; dedicated in ways she mistakenly thought she understood. But still, stubborn or not, it would have been short-lived. _

_ He'd have tried, of course, to let certain things slide. Certain... _ small... _ things. A bad thought here, a stray gaze there and maybe a white lie to keep the peace, but not much more than that. _

_ He's dedicated, but he's also uncompromising. Betrayal, abuse, infliction of harm - these are not things Frank Castle suffers lightly. There's no reason to think Father Francis Castiglione would either. _

Be better. Be better.

_ Hail Marys. Penance. Forgiveness. Second chances. _

_ Second chances granted through gritted teeth and clenched fists. _

_ She knows him, and she knows Frank Castle and The Punisher are one and the same, and the unrealized Father Francis would have just been another version of who and what he is. A battered wife, a frightened child, an abused dog is all it would take to replace prayers with eulogies and incense with gunsmoke. _

_ Hail Marys. Penance. Forgiveness. Second chances. _

Be better. Be better.

_ Punishment. _

_ It always ends in punishment. _

_ "Goddamn joke," he says again. _

_ "Not so funny. I believe it." _

_ He grins and his mouth is stained red. "You could see me in one of those robes? Little white collar?" _

_ And a rosary… crimson beads that shine like drops of blood. _

_ She shrugs. "Maybe." _

_ His smile falters a bit, and the old grimness she's become so familiar with flares in his eyes. It's another possibility for him. Maybe it’s not as real as the one he chose, maybe not as sharp and clear as the deserts of the Gulf or the smile on Maria's face, but it _ is _ something else. Something away from the hurt and the rage, the hands dripping blood and the memento mori he clings to in the hope that one day it might take him too. _

_ It's a different life, unfettered and untarnished by bullets and painted ponies and the stink of Billy Russo’s betrayal, and there's something in him that craves that. He searches each day for some way to erase the pain, even if the last thing he wants to do is find it. He is who he is. Maria didn't change that and neither can she. _

_ He shakes his head. "Nah. I'll leave the sermons to Red. Give him that much at least." _

_ Yes, she supposes they can give him that much. _

_ She walks over to join him at the window and he slides his arm around her waist, fingers sweeping over the satin of her nightgown as he presses his lips to her hair. _

_ Outside the bells have stopped ringing for a spell and the city is suddenly blissfully quiet. _

_ "Stay here with you," he whispers more to himself than to her. "Don't need anything else." _

_ It's a lie, but a small one and he can do penance for it later. He always does. _

_ She brushes her lips along the curve of his neck and goosebumps rise on his skin. His nails dig into her hips and he buries his face in her hair. _

_ "Make it mean something." _

_ He will. He does. He has. _

Be better. Be better.

_ When he kisses her, he tastes like sin and he stains her mouth red too. _

~~~

He circles her apartment for weeks after that day at the hospital; spirals that become smaller and smaller with every footstep, and then when there's nowhere else to go but to her front door, he turns around and starts the circles again, growing bigger and wider until he almost loses her in the middle and starts his journey back again.

She texts him every now and then - short messages that he never answers. Not because he doesn’t want to, not because he doesn’t appreciate it and his heart doesn’t leap into his chest when he hears the ping of his cellphone. But rather because one reply would lead to another and another, and he knows he’s not strong enough for that. He knows that it starts with an answer and ends with him in her apartment, his heart in her hands, worthless and dripping black blood on her floor and tainting it with sin. 

He reminds himself constantly that Murdock is good. He’s decent. His sins are easy to forgive and forget, and if she just let go of whatever this thing is she feels for Frank or The Punisher or whatever the hell aspect of him she finds so goddamn fascinating, her and the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen might have a chance.

But still, the texts come. And still, they warm his heart in ways he’d thought he’d forgotten.

_ Be safe. _

_ Take care. _

_ Look after yourself. _

He tells himself it's enough to know she's there, safe, healthy. Nothing else matters. 

He tells himself a lot of things. Most of them lies and half truths. 

So he carries on like before. He drowns the city in blood. Drowns himself in it too. He tears flesh from bone and douses the ground his victims walked on in salt and fire. He commits sin after sin after sin, and in his head he goes to her and confesses and she forgives him, even if no one else does. And that's all that matters.

So he spirals.

~~~

The spiral stops, fittingly, in a church - St Jude’s - the same one where he married Maria and christened their children. The same one where he ultimately buried all of them, himself included.

He doesn't think of it as a good or bad place. He doesn't think of it much at all since the day he walked out of it after the funeral. It's just there and it holds his memories in its walls in a way he can't anymore.

But there's something that draws him to it late one rainy Sunday night. Maybe it's the dark or the loneliness. Maybe it's the idea that forgiveness is just out of reach, something to be looked upon but never touched. Or maybe it's the fact that he's just spent the last two hours in a basement slowly and delicately tightening a vice around the head of a child pornographer, waiting for his skull to crack and his brain to dribble out of his ear. 

So when he hears the church bells over the screams and the pleading, he stops, cocks his head, and listens, nostrils flaring like a wild animal trying to find its prey… or its pack. Maybe even it's mate.

He wonders when he became more animal than human. He wonders if that's even a real question.

Still, he shouldn't be able to hear it down here; the sound shouldn't seep through the concrete and the blood, the shame. But despite logic and physics and the fact that he doesn't and will never have Matthew Murdock's senses, the ringing is loud and clear, musical if not gentle. It sounds real and defined, contained in a way that he hasn't felt since he started with all those ever increasing spirals that turned his world nebulous and lonely. 

Gooseflesh rises on the back of his neck and he turns, sniffing the air again. He thinks of the dull night sky, and in his head he sees the weak light of the moon and the stars bouncing of the tarnished metal of the bells. 

He shivers, almost forgets what he's doing, that his hands are wet with blood and there's panic in the air.

Not for long though. The bells peal one last time and he ends it quickly after that - a fast, forceful turn of the axle that heralds a low scream and a louder crunch - and then just like the ringing, the panic is gone.

He doesn't wait around to clean up, to reflect on what he's destroyed and in the process, who he's saved or avenged. It never really was about vengeance anyway. There isn't, as he's always known, enough blood in the world for that.

He leaves, walks out into the rainy sooty streets, the smell of wet garbage and exhaust fumes in the air. He turns in a half circle to see the steeple erect and shining against the night sky and, despite himself, he finds himself walking towards it.

He doesn't particularly want to go to church, stand in God's house, with the bells and the prayers, the smell of incense heavy in the air. He doesn't want to lurk in the shadows and listen to the words of his own sins and pretend that it doesn't bother him. He doesn't belong and there's nothing left for him but somehow he can't seem to stop himself, the compulsion to get closer overrides every reservation or desire he has, leaving only the steady pace of his footfalls and his hands dripping blood like a trail of damnation behind him.

He slips into the church bathroom to wash the taint off his skin - he wonders uncharitably if the icy water from the tap could be considered holy - and then climbs a flight of stairs to the empty gallery, where he fades into the darkness.

It’s early, the service not yet started, most of the parishioners milling about in the foyer; some - few - sitting with their heads bowed in the pews. There won’t be many of them - not on a night like tonight, not for an evening service which usually falls short in the attendance department as it is. 

He glances at the windows; stained glass of course - the Catholics did always like their splendour - and then to the pulpit and the organ, the pieta set high into the stone wall and illuminated with thick, white candles.

The confessional at the back is closed - occupied - and he can make out shadows through the carved wood. Someone is asking for absolution and thinking a few Hail Marys could do it - he’d laugh if he didn’t know how addictive that could feel. For himself though, he hasn’t been to confession in years. He met Maria and suddenly sin didn’t feel like sin anymore… and then he lost her and sin became absolution.

Besides, confession is about being better. Finding peace. He doesn’t want to be better, and he’s already found peace in what he does.

He tells himself a lot of things.

So he sits in the dark, the pew hard and uncomfortable under his ass, the incense a little too heady, too smoky, and the cold from the stones seeping up through his boots and into his bones and making him tremble like a frightened kitten.

It’ll be warmer downstairs - they switch on the central heating at this time of year, try and do what they can to keep the draft and the chill at bay - but that doesn’t entice him to move. 

Maybe this can be the start of his penance. He almost laughs at the thought. How long would he need to sit in the cold, choking on smoke to atone? How long before he can be warm again? He doesn’t have that many years left in him - he doesn’t think anybody does.

The bells toll one last time and he stuffs his hands into his pockets, eyes the stack of worn Bibles on the pew next to him. It’s too dark to read up here but that doesn’t bother him - in fact it feels more like a boon than a hindrance. He wouldn’t follow along even if he could. 

Below him the parishioners make their way down the aisle and cluster around the front rows, close to the lectern. They’re not in their Sunday best - it’s hard to be in your best anything in weather like this.

He hears the doors to the confessional open, the sound of heels against the hard stone floor - loud and echoing at first and then receding - followed by the softer rustle of robes and cloth, as a priest makes his way into the pulpit.

There’s a brief greeting for the congregation - it’s nothing new, nothing special. The priest welcomes them and asks them to welcome one another and they do. He hears the low murmuring of greetings, a few gentle laughs. This is fellowship.This is how people build ties and bonds even if they go home to their separate lives every night and never see one another again. It’s one of the many ways towns and cities evolve to become something more. It gives them history and purpose. Community.

_ Communion _.

And that’s when the wrongness of what he’s doing hits him. It’s not that he shouldn’t be in a church - he gave up believing in cosmic punishment long before he gave up believing altogether - and he figures if someone or _ Someone _ was planning on smiting him, that would have happened a long time ago and for a far worse crime than bringing sin into a church.

No, it’s something else entirely.

It’s the realisation that he can never ever be part of this network of souls that underpin Hell’s Kitchen. He can never form a link in any kind of common chain, because what and who he is demands that he’s a black hole - a cipher - and that he stands on the outside with no way in. He’s the very thing the communion below seeks to cut out and leave to die alone in the cold.

Pretending he could be something else is the real abomination.

Somewhere he hears the priest start up again - the subject of tonight’s sermon is about where God is during times of need and why it feels like He’s abandoned His children when they need Him the most.

Yeah, that one was never going to fly.

He pushes himself up and takes a step towards the door. 

And that’s when he hears it - faint at first, but getting louder; the steady click of heels on wooden steps as someone makes their way up to the gallery. Someone like him. Someone who wants to be away from the people and the light and listen unnoticed from the darkness.

He sinks back down into his seat, shifts further back into the darkness in the hope that he won’t be seen, bows his head so that even if he is, he won’t be disturbed. He thinks he’ll sit this out, wait until they’re gone, slink out of the shadows and back into them so fast no one will ever know he was there.

He’s become so good at hiding. 

But then the door opens, and for a second, a single flicker of light from a dying candle catches her hair. 

And nothing is the same after that.

~~~

_ “Did it help?” he asks. _

_ “Did what?” _

_ “Confession? That night at the church - the first one?” _

_ He’s never asked about that, even though it, and everything associated with it is what brought them together. He seems hesitant, like he’s scared he’ll hurt or offend her by prying. _

_ The truth is that he’s the only person in the world she wishes would ask. _

_ She shakes her head. “Not the confession, no. You know that.” _

_ He sits down on her couch, takes another sip of wine. _

_ “Yeah, people think it’s a get out of jail free card,” he frowns, seems to be considering something very deeply. “Hell, I’m not sure the church even discourages that - but you still have to look at yourself when you get up in the morning.” _

_ She nods. He’s right. She doesn’t think forgiveness works the way St Jude’s wants you to believe. _

_ “You helped though,” she says. _

_ “I didn’t do anything.” _

_ “You did.” she whispers. “You did, even when you didn’t know you were doing it. Even when it hurt.” _

_ He glances down at his hands, fumbles with his ring finger, bites his lip so hard, she’s sure it will bleed. _

_ He doesn’t need to bleed. He’s bled enough. _

_ When he looks at her his eyes are sparkling with unshed tears. She’s seen this expression before - once when he thought he’d murdered two women because his bloodlust was so great, nothing in the world could satiate him and again when he sent her away. _

_ Regret. Disgust. But underneath it all an all-encompassing shame for who and what he is. _

_ “I never wanted you to leave,” he says. _

_ She steps closer, and he wraps his arms around her waist and rests his head against her belly. _

_ “I never did.” _

~~~

She doesn’t seem to notice him at first. Her eyes are red and swollen and her mascara trails down her cheeks. She sits in the very front pew of the gallery, close enough so she can peer over the edge into the church. She doesn’t even glance in his direction.

It wasn’t like he thought he’d never see her again. That’s always a possibility when you’re doing spirals around her apartment, her work, her life. But he never thought it would be like this - quiet, controlled, without sirens and screaming and fire in the air. He’s an asshole, and assholes always like to think of themselves as the heroes in their stories. After all, he knows what it’s like when danger forces you to operate entirely on instinct making thinking and decisions ultimately unnecessary.

But this… this is something else entirely. This _ is _ choice, distilled down to its purest form.

There’s a moment - and it’s only brief - that he considers waiting it out, not saying anything and hoping that she leaves when the sermon is over. But he can’t do that. He won’t. This is Karen and even though he knows about the dangers of not guarding his heart around her as well as he should, he also knows that his broken excuse for a heart is a small sacrifice. 

The congregation starts to sing - _ Be still, my soul _ \- and in front of him her shoulders shake and she buries her head in her hands… and any last thoughts of leaving are drowned in the music.

He stands up, moves smoothly towards her pew and slides in next to her.

If she’s surprised, she doesn’t show it. She just looks at him with her tear-stained cheeks and overly bright eyes and waits to see what he’ll do next.

He guesses on some level, that’s exactly what he’s doing as well.

_ Where is your God, Frank Castle? Where is He? _

Her name coming out of his mouth it sounds more like a rumble than a word and he wonders if she’ll even understand it, but then her hand finds his, and she twists their fingers together, gripping him so tightly it almost hurts. 

Almost. He doesn’t think they can hurt each other more than they already have.

She wipes at her eyes and then shifts closer to him and together they listen to a sermon that he knows he’ll never remember.

And he’s not cold anymore.

~~~

_ “This one?” _

_ She touches the coin shaped scar on his shoulder. It’s rough at the edges but smooth in the middle as her finger glides over it. _

_ “Baghdad 2006. Roadblock that turned into a gunfight. It was a… it was a seven out of ten” _

_ “And this?” _

_ She traces the long line of a scar on his torso, over his nipple. _

_ “2007. Bowie knife. Enemy camp invasion. Had acid on the blade. An eight, eight-and-a-half.” _

_ She nods, runs her finger over a smaller, thinner line on his hand. It stretches from the meat on his palm to his wrist. _

_ “Another invasion? Bowie knife?” _

_ He shakes his head and pulls her closer, kisses her hair. “Cat scratch. Kitten drowning in a storm water drain. One out of ten.” _

_ “You saved him.” _

_ He nods, and his eyes are twinkling. “Yeah. Yeah I did.” _

  


~~~

  


He goes to her apartment that night.

He tells himself he shouldn’t, but much like the compulsion to go to church, he finds he doesn’t really have much choice. He doesn’t want one either. 

The rain has turned into a storm and his coat flaps in the icy November wind while thunder rolls and lightning crashes through the sky. It’s late but there still seems to be a lot of traffic for a Sunday night and the cars aquaplane through the flooded streets, sending plumes of dirty water onto the sidewalks as they hit puddles and potholes.

He climbs the seven flights of stairs of her fire escape, taps on her window and without a word she lets him in and watches as he drips all over her floor.

She doesn't speak and he looks at her for a long time before putting his gun down on her coffee table and shucking off his coat, his weapons belt, the memento mori chest piece.

The apartment is warm and bright. It smells of cinnamon and vanilla and even though it feels like the walls are closing in on him, she's standing in the middle of it like freedom from everything he's ever wanted to leave behind. 

She's not freedom though. She's another prison, but one he's yearned for, for far too long.

The silence stretches long and thin and he fights the desire to break it prematurely and risk the wrong words. 

Some things take time. Some things need a bit of care.

_ Not yet. Not yet. Enjoy these last seconds of free will. Enjoy the possibilities it holds. Enjoy the end for as long as you can. _

Ultimately, when it comes to her, he's a coward. 

He touches the petals of the white roses he gave her a lifetime ago, and they're soft and smooth like silk under his fingers. It feels like he spends a long time doing that. That and listening to the rain lashing against her building, the thunder rumbling loudly like a harbinger of the apocalypse. That and listening to his own heart beat louder than all these things.

And then she takes a breath and it feels like she's sucked all the air out of the apartment and before she can say anything, he turns to her.

"I love you," he says and his words sound like confession. "I love you and it means everything."

It doesn't seem to come as a shock to her. In fact, if anything, she looks like she was expecting it in much the same way one expects fundamental things to be true and unchanging.

She takes a step towards him, looks him dead in the eye.

"I love you too."

It was always going to go like this. 

For a second he can't breathe and it feels like someone took the sharpest blade in the world and slid it between his ribs, into his lungs and heart and then twisted it. 

And it's so stupid. Because ultimately, he knows this. He's known it for so long now. She might not have said it so bluntly before but she's shown him and told him in so many different ways. There's no room for doubt, even though logically there should be. Logically he doesn't deserve this, logically his good deeds are bad and he has nowhere near enough cosmic credit to make this real.

And yet... and yet it's true. _ Fundamental _. Unchanging.

He loves her. She loves him. It's as easy and as complicated as that.

_ His heart in her hands, worthless and dripping black blood on her floor and tainting it with sin. And now, apparently hers in his. _

He nods once, short and sharp. "It doesn't change anything."

"It never does."

He gives her a sad smile. "You know why though."

It's a statement but it comes out as more of a question and when she gives him a look that's a perfect mixture of exasperation and melancholy, he realises that all the reasons in the world ain't worth shit.

Not to her at least. Maybe still to him. 

_ Maybe _.

"So what do we do now?"

She shrugs. “I don’t know.”

Neither does he. He has no idea. Nothing other than to reach out and take her hand, run his fingers over its bumps and creases and commit it to memory as if he hasn't already. She's warm and he wants to hold onto her forever, but he doesn’t. He threads their fingers together and brings them to his mouth, brushes his lips across her knuckles. 

She smells sweet and earthy, jasmine and rosemary and a hint of something heavier and darker too and its heat spreads to his tongue and down his throat where it sits hard as a stone in his belly.

“I love you,” he says again, without looking at her. "I love you."

He lingers, and then lets her fingers slide through his before gathering up his things, his guns, his armour, the memento mori which is more part of him than his own name. He looks at her once, heart breaking at the tears shimmering in her eyes, and then he steps back out onto the fire escape and disappears into the night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took a bit longer to get up than I expected. It was a week from hell and this needed more editing than I thought it did.
> 
> Please let me know if you like it.

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. _

The words hang in the air like gunsmoke and no matter how hard he tries not to, he finds himself breathing them in over and over again. They should choke him, stick in the back of his throat and make him cough, but they don’t. Instead they move through his bones and blood, opening him up one piece at a time until he feels almost high. Almost _ euphoric. _

He walks it off - except he doesn’t. He finds himself spiralling again, out in the night, wandering block after block, drenched in the rain but somehow not cold, thinking of nothing but the taste of her skin, the smell of her hair. 

He fights the urge to turn around and go back. She’d let him inside again - he knows she would. She’d let him stay and that could mean whatever he wanted: her home, her life, her bed. Or none of the above. He doesn’t have to choose. In fact it’s better if he doesn’t.

So he walks and he walks. And his heart beats like a drum and he wears holes through his boots.

It was the biggest mistake. It was also the best decision he’s made in a long time.

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. _

~~~

_ “What changed your mind?” _

_ They’re lying in her bed, her legs stretched across his chest and he's absently caressing her inner thigh. Her skin is prickling but he’s pretending he doesn’t notice and so is she. _

_ “‘Bout what?” _

_ “Becoming a priest.” _

_ He sinks further back against the pillows, into the gloom, where the light from the flickering candles doesn’t reach. She can make out his profile though. Strong. Bold. Ugly, but beautiful all the same. _

_ “Because it was bullshit.” _

_ “No, it wasn’t.” _

_ He frowns and sighs deeply, hand going still on her leg as he stares broodily at the ceiling. _

_ She’s hit a nerve just like she knew she would. He’s told her before that she gets under his skin and tears him apart. He’s also told her he likes it, that it makes him feel safe. _

_ The truth is it makes her feel safe too. _

_ Still, it doesn’t mean the actual tearing isn’t painful - most worthwhile things are - and sometimes - like now - he struggles with the demons she asks him to confront. _

_ She almost feels sorry for him. _

Almost. _ But he’s never been one to suffer pity. _

_ “Frank, it’s part of who you are--” _

_ But before she can finish, he’s already shaking his head. _

_ “No. You know what I am. You _ know _ .” _

_ Yes, she does. It’s why she loves him. She just wishes he could see that too, and appreciate it for what it is, rather than what it lacks. _

_ “I do.” She says. _

_ He turns onto his side, touches her jaw, and slides his hand into her hair. He looks very serious and his eyes are deep black holes that seem to be sucking up all the remaining light in the room. _

_ "I’m not a man who deals in forgiveness." _

_ "No, she says, “Not often." _

Sometimes though. Sometimes when we least expect it.

_ For a second he looks almost saddened by her words - saddened and simultaneously relieved - before a small resigned smile creeps onto his face and he presses a gentle kiss to her forehead. _

_ “Karen Page,” he whispers, more to himself than to her. “Feed my fucking heart to a dog.” _

Yes, she can do that. She just chooses not to.

_ “I just want you to know,” she says as she rests a hand on his cheek, “that I love you _ because _ of what you are, not despite it.” _

_ He makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat, bobs his head and turns his face away unable to look her in the eye. _

_ The tearing is always painful. _

_ His hand goes limp in her hair and she thinks he’ll settle down again, go back to staring at the ceiling or out of the window, but instead he takes a ragged breath and then leans in and covers her mouth with his. _

_ He’s sweet and gentle, tentative almost before his lips and tongue become more desperate. And when her skin flushes with gooseflesh, they don’t ignore it anymore. _

_ His kisses taste of tears. _

_ ~~~ _

_ Afterwards, she lies in his arms. He’s moved in close, face buried in her shoulder and he’s breathing heavily in her ear. _

_ "I love you," he whispers. "I love you so much." _

_ She doesn't think she'll ever get tired of hearing it, even if he were to say it every minute of every day for the rest of their lives. _

~~~

Sunday. Sunday and he’s back in the church. Back in the gallery, hidden from the world, except for the one part of the world that knows he’s there.

Because she’s there too. And her hand is in his and they’re not talking and they’re not listening, and they’re not singing or confessing or atoning.

They’re just there. Her hand in his.

~~~

There's festive cheer in the air, the smell of holly and cinnamon spice hanging over Hell's Kitchen and disguising the blood and the sin at its core. 

Despite himself, Frank finds he’s looking at Christmas trees and humming along to the carols in his head.

He thinks of Christmas mornings by the fire, the kids unwrapping their presents, and Maria in her maroon nightshirt, sleepy and hair messy as she nurses a coffee in her hands. She smiles at him and shifts into his arms.

_ We did good, Mr Castle _, she says.

Yeah, they did. They did so good.

He puts his lips to her hair, pulls her close and something about it doesn't feel quite so sharp or quite so painful anymore. 

~~~

He thinks of Christmas mornings by the fire.

Her hair is like spun gold and she's in his arms, hand resting over his heart, legs tangled with his.

"Stay," she says and he does.

~~~

He buys a bracelet. It’s delicate silver filigree set with dark blue stones and it shines and shimmers when the light touches it. He tells himself it’s not a big thing, it’s not important. He might not even give it to her.

He tells himself a lot of things.

~~~

Christmas. Midnight mass. The church is full this time, but somehow not full enough for the gallery to be in use.

He wonders if this is some kind of cosmic interference.

Everything is very pretty. The stained glass is lit up and fairy lights, bound up in fake pine branches and plastic red berries, twinkle, making the shadows dance across the cold stone walls.

He has his arm around her and her head is resting in the hollow of his neck, like the space was made for her. She smells of cinnamon and sugar and when he presses his lips to her temple, he feels her breath hitch in her throat. 

It would be so easy to just give into this. Take away the questions, replace them with other ones neither of them can answer, and just have what they both want, even if it’s only for a moment. 

But, as he knows, moments stretch and moments become other moments and each moment takes them closer to the inevitable - and the inevitable is that he _ will _ lose her. He _ will _ break her heart. He _ will _pull her down into the cold and the blood and the pain, and she’ll come willingly, and then they’ll need to answer all those questions they’ve been trying to avoid. And he may be an asshole, and he may be a killer, and he may be any number of things he doesn’t care to admit, but he can’t be the person that tears Karen Page apart.

He _ won’t _.

Somewhere a faint and not wholly unfamiliar voice tells him it might well be too late for that.

_ I love you. I love you. _

Still though, the smell of her hair and the feel of her skin, the way she fits against him, and the sound of his heart beating loud enough for the whole world to hear makes all that logic and righteousness seem futile in the face of what really matters.

_ I love you. I love you too. _

The sermon is about… something. He’s not sure what but considering the time of year he can guess. He doesn’t much care. 

_ Where is your God, Frank Castle? Where is your God? _

He shivers, runs a hand through her hair and then over her shoulder, thumb dragging against her throat. He could put his lips there, feel her blood pulsing through her veins, scrape his teeth along the curve of it and taste her. Just once. He could do it just once, and then never again.

Except he couldn’t. 

He’s not strong enough.

He leans back into the pew, tries to ignore the throbbing between his legs and the deep note of musk hiding just beneath her cinnamon and sugar.

_ I love you. I love you and it means everything. _

~~~

When the sermon ends and enough of the parishioners have filed out so that they can slip away unnoticed, she turns to him, takes a breath, and kisses his lips.

It’s fleeting, almost chaste - _ almost _\- but she’s warm like fire and he sinks into it like he never had a choice, which, if he’s honest, he didn’t. 

She tastes much like she smells, sweet and earthy and, as he leans into her, hands twitching as he tries to figure out both the best and worst places to put them, she pulls back, covers her mouth as if she’s shocked at her own forthrightness.

“Merry Christmas, Frank,” she whispers without looking at him.

And then she goes and takes his whole heart with her.

~~~

_ "Do you miss it though?" _

_ "Miss what?" He leans in, kisses her knee and his stubble scrapes across her skin and makes her gasp. _

_ "Church." _

_ "What am I gonna miss church for? Sunday mornings were the only time we could sleep in." _

_ “Sunday nights?” _

_ He snorts. “Yeah, look how that worked out.” _

_ "It _ did _ work out. Eventually." She can’t help the grin on her face. _

_ "Created a whole bunch of problems." _

_ She huffs, rolls her eyes. “ _ You’re _ a problem.” _

_ “Ain’t gonna argue with that.” _

_ She gives him a dark look. She’s not willing to let this go yet, not willing to be sidetracked by some dry humour and a charming smile. _

_ "Ok then. Religion. Catholicism? Do you miss those?" _

_ He eyes her quizzically, fingertips ghosting over her skin. _

_ "Are you asking me if I believe in God, Karen Page? After everything?" _

_ She shrugs. _

_ "Is that the question you want to answer?" _

_ It's his turn to give her a dark look. _

_ "I didn't wanna answer any questions," he says good naturedly. “I wanna do this.” _

_ His hand dips low, fingers sliding to the crease of her leg, lingering as her breathing gets faster and her hips arch. She’s still soaked from before - him and her - but even so she feels a fresh wave of wetness slicking her thighs and she grips his shoulder, nails digging into his skin. _

_ Maybe she doesn’t want him to answer her question either. Maybe the time for questions has passed. _

_ But then he stops suddenly and frowns at her as he trails his wet fingers over her belly and up between her breasts, drawing loops and swirls that shimmer on her skin in the candlelight. _

_ "I don't know," he says thoughtfully. "If God exists it means He took Maria and my kids away. It means He's cruel and doesn't give a fuck about us… and then there's the church and I don't like a lot of things it does and stands for…" _

_ "But?" _

_ He snorts. _

_ "But when you come from a very Italian family and you were going to be a priest, it's a little hard to just let that all go." _

_ She nods. That makes sense. Really, truly it does. She gets it. _

_ He kisses her ear and neck. "What about you?" _

_ "What about me?" _

_ "Must have felt something to make you come to the church that night? You still believe?" _

_ He's right, she did feel something but she's not sure it had anything to do with faith. _

_ She shakes her head. "Not for a long time." _

_ "Why not?" _

_ "Same as you, I guess. Just that if God existed, He hasn't been very kind. I just didn't have the Italian family to make breaking the ties harder.” She sighs, rolls over to lie on her back. “I guess if there is a God, I'm in for a lot of punishment.” _

_ He doesn't like it when she talks like this. He might have accepted the inevitable pain of loving someone again, especially someone like her, but when she gives into her own melancholy and guilt it upsets him on some level she still can't quite comprehend. _

_ This time is no different. _

_ His face is like marble in the dim light, alabaster white with black holes for eyes and a mouth that could devour her in a single bite. _

_ “Karen,” his voice is low and serious, all of the previous humour and lightness lost. His hand closes around her chin so that she can’t look away. “That ain’t true. You hear me?” _

_ And it is true, but she hears him all the same. _

_ Hand on his face, lips pressing hard into his. He's so good to her. He always has been, even when he was lost and confused and the void in his life was tearing him apart from the inside. Even when he left and then again when he asked that she do the same. _

_ The tearing always hurts. _

_ Not for the first time, she wonders if that punishment she is so afraid of isn’t just the very state of having him in her life like this. It would make sense. She gets a taste of something so sweet, so devoted, so incredibly in tune with who she is and how she thinks and then that same something runs off into the night to kill and maim and destroy. _

_ He's beautiful and ugly, good and bad and absolutely nothing in between, exquisitely cruel and indescribably gentle. As far as punishment goes it fits the crime far better than any Hail Marys ever could. _

_ There’s just one thing though. _

_ One. _ Small _ . Thing. _

_ If there is a Creator and He designs cosmic penance, He forgot that she fell in love with The Punisher before she fell in love with Frank Castle, and even now the monster with the memento mori has a place in her heart reserved entirely just for him. _

_ “You know what I’ve done,” she says. _

_ He cups the back of her head, looks into her eyes. “Yeah, and you know it doesn’t matter. Not to me.” _

_ She runs a finger over his lips, down his neck and pulls him closer to kiss her. Again, he’s sweet and gentle, but she can almost taste the roughness in him. He groans into her mouth, angles himself so his body covers hers and she can feel him hot and pulsing against her hip. _

_ "I want you, I love you," he breathes. "It doesn't matter what you did. _

_ “How many times do I need to tell you that?" _

A million times. A million billion times.

_ "Just once more," she says. _

_ And then again and again and again every day until the world ends. _

~~~

Christmas is indeed, a sorry affair. He sees Curt and they drink beer and eat some plastic pork with too sweet apple sauce that Target is flogging as a family dinner. They both decide to forgo the fruit pudding and custard on account of good common sense and the desire not to spend the night hugging the toilet bowl.

“You know, Dinah invited me round today,” Curt says as the afternoon drags on.

“Yeah? She celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour?”

Curt shakes his head. 

“No, but you don’t need to celebrate to eat good food and enjoy good company...“ he looks pointedly at Frank. “Two things we seem to have forgone here.”

“So why didn’t you go, you asshole?”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Dinah didn’t invite me anywhere.”

“Yeah, we both know I’m not talking about Dinah.”

He ignores that, takes a swig of his beer. “You should have gone.”

Curt glares at him. “I was looking after you.”

As if he didn’t need another reason to feel like shit.

He glances at the clock. “Could still go,” he says. “She’s probably still hoping you’ll show.”

"I'll go if you do."

"Ain't got nowhere to go."

"Liar."

“I ain’t lying.”

“So you’re saying you bought that bracelet for me? You shouldn’t have.”

Frank rolls his eyes. "Come on Curt, Dinah's probably wondering where you are."

“That’s rich, coming from you.”

He guesses it is. But when Curt picks up his coat and scarf and heads out the door, he finds himself doing the same.

~~~

_ “Forgiveness is too hard. I'm not cut out for it.” He's musing now, deep in thought, her earlier questions obviously having inspired some intense reflection. "It's not something I do well... or at all really."_

_ She knew this. She knew all of it. But she has to ask anyway. “What do you mean?” _

_ “Priesthood. Confession,” he says. “Man beats his wife, hurts his children…” _

_ It’s like he’s repeating her thoughts back to her. _

Prayers turn to pleading and incense to gunsmoke. The rosary with beads of blood becomes a noose.

_ She nods, kisses his jaw and settles her head on his chest while he plays with her hair. _

_ “I wouldn’t have been able to let that slide. I couldn’t forgive that.” _

_ “You forgave me.” _

_ He drags her closer, fingers digging into her hips as he kisses her fiercely. “You never needed to be forgiven. And definitely not by me.” _

_ But she did. And she has. _

~~~

Her apartment is empty - he doesn’t know why he thought it would be anything else. She has friends - people who care about her and would never let her sit at home on Christmas Day, alone and lonely.

Murdock, Foggy, Nurse Temple. Hell, he wouldn’t be surprised if _ she _got an invitation to Dinah’s non-Christmas.

No family though. He suspects that is something Karen makes for herself.

He has no idea how long she’ll be nor any idea how long he’ll stay. Except that’s a lie, because he knows exactly how long he would wait for her, no matter what the weather is doing.

So he sits on the fire escape, the icy metal of the steps burning through his jeans, as he watches the snow fall and cover the city’s ugliness in something new and clean.

He doesn’t feel particularly cold though. Somehow he never does when he’s near her. 

The day wears on. It gets dimmer, bleaker and he shuffles further into his coat. The church bells ring in the distance but she won’t be there - not today - so he stays. He catches snowflakes on his fingers, tries to make out their shapes before they melt. There are so many, no two alike.

_ My girl, _ he thinks. _ My sweet girl _.

She’s not his girl.

It’s fully dark when suddenly he hears her window open behind him and she steps out onto the fire escape. She's wearing a long black coat and boots up to her knees, but he sees a flash of something blue and silky underneath and he wishes he could see her dress properly. She sits beside him and hands him a steaming mug of mulled wine that smells like cloves and berries and makes frozen patterns against the night sky.

“How long have you been waiting?”

_ Forever _.

“Few hours.”

She nods slowly, sips her wine and then slips her arm through his, rests her head on his shoulder.

“Pretty out here,” she says as she studies the snowflakes, and he nods.

“It is.”

So pretty. The prettiest thing he's ever seen. Prettier than all the stars in the sky.

He swallows a mouthful of the wine. It's spicy without being sweet and it settles in his belly, making him feel lazy and buzzy all at the same time.

“You have a good day?” he asks and she shrugs.

“Yeah, could’ve been better, I guess. Just me and Matt and Foggy, a side of beef which made me feel like the cow deserved better... and some turkey that our administration really should have been pardoned on account of not being good for human consumption.”

"I don't think the current administration is good for much."

She sighs. "Not gonna argue with that."

He chuckles and takes her hand, thumb brushing a plain silver bracelet that twinkles in the moonlight.

“This new?”

She smiles. “Matt gave it to me.”

Yeah… yeah of course he did. 

Murdock… The good, decent one whose sins are simple and easily forgiven. The one she deserves. The one she has a future with if she'd just give him a chance. Frank wouldn't stand in their way, even if it killed him.

“I didn’t bring you anything that nice.” 

It's not exactly a lie but it comes close.

She kisses his cheek. “Yeah you did.”

Yeah, maybe he did, but it doesn’t feel worthy of her.

She shivers and he lets go of her hand and slides an arm over her shoulders. "You wanna come in? You could stay."

"You know why I shouldn't."

She nods. "I do. But you still could."

They sit in silence and when they finish their wine, she extricates herself from him and slips in through her window.

She leaves it open and he stares at it for a long time before climbing the seven floors to the snowy ground and heading back towards his cold apartment and the cold life he has inside of it.

~~~

He doesn’t get far though.

He’s only gone two blocks before he finds it. Later he’ll wonder if it was karma or fate or any one of those cosmic forces he’s given up believing in. After all, he never walks this route - it’s out of his way, indirect and even when he was spiralling, this street never led anywhere he wanted to go. And then, of course, there’s always the fact that he wasn’t supposed to be here tonight at all.

But he is. And that’s why at 10pm on Christmas day he’s lying flat on his belly, the snow soaking through his clothes as he reaches into a storm water drain and pulls out a trembling grey kitten, soaked to the bone and covered in any manner of things he doesn’t want to think about too hard.

It’s squealing too, little razor sharp claws batting weakly at Frank’s wrists, as he holds it up by the scruff of its neck and tries to figure out exactly what he needs to do next.

But he already knows. He wraps it in his scarf, tucks it into his coat, turns around and heads back the way he came.

~~~

_ “This one?” _

_ “Mosul. 2013. Shrapnel from a landmine.” _

_ The thin white line slices down the side of his forearm. It’s almost perfectly straight, as if someone drew it with a ruler. _

_ “Eight?” _

_ He smiles at her. _

_ “Seven," he says, and then frowns. "No, six and a half.” _

_ She kisses the scar and points to another, “This one?” _

_ A gash low on his hip. It’s thick and jagged. _

_ “Hell’s Kitchen 2016. Blacksmith tried to kill someone very special to me. I couldn’t let that happen.” _

_ She stops then, gut clenching, and looks up at him. _

_ “I didn’t know you got hit that day.” _

_ He shrugs. “More of a graze.” _

_ "I'm sorry." _

_ "Don't be." _

_ She nods slowly, the knot in her belly loosening. _

_ “Six and a half? Seven?” _

_ He shakes his head. “No, that was a special one. I didn’t even feel it.” _

_ “How does that work?” _

_ She kisses the gash, lips moving steadily across it and then downwards. _

_ “It just does.” He gasps as she takes him into her mouth. _

_ Yes, it just does. _

~~~

Her apartment is as bright as he remembered and he stands on the threshold like a dumbass about to enter another world, too stupid to know that everything he's ever wanted exists on the other side.

She's wildly happy at first, the smile on her face radiant as she opens the door to him. But that smile fades, first in disappointment and then in concern as he shows her what he's holding.

"Jesus Christ," she whispers as she takes the kitten and rushes to the bathroom. "What happened?"

He follows her, still feeling awkward, and explains: he was walking home; he heard something; it was this tiny mite stuck in a drain. There really isn't much more to it.

She runs a sink of lukewarm water, tells him to look in her linen closet for a heating pad and to put in the microwave.

He obeys, moving around her space like it's just any other place, like it isn't some kind of twisted promised land that bore witness to the most gut-wrenching confession of his life.

_ I love you. I love you. _

She was there with the roses and he was…

And now that blue silky dress is as pretty as he imagined, prettier even with the white flowers and deep neckline and...

_ Focus Frank, focus. _

He finds the bag, tosses it in the microwave and puts it on for three minutes, watches it spinning around like he has nothing better to do.

There's some splashing from the bathroom, some pitiful mewling, Karen's voice soft and sweet as she hushes the kitten, promises him it’ll be okay.

_ Will it Karen? Will it be okay? You never lie to me. _

She's calling for a towel and he's opening her linen closet again like he's allowed to, pulling out a navy towel that's soft and fluffy and smells like vanilla and cinnamon.

And then she's in front of him, and he's wrapping the kitten up as gently as he can, rubbing the excess water off his fur and handing it back to her like a swaddled child. She cradles it, wiping at his eyes, smoothing the fabric over his ears. The kitten might not be cold anymore but it's weak and frightened and he knows enough about kittens to know there’s still a battle ahead. It’s likely starving and dehydrated, anaemic if the fleas are anything to go by.

The microwave pings and it feels like it shakes him out of his stupor. 

"Sit," he says. "I'll sort it."

There’s some leftover unpardoned turkey that she brought home from lunch in the fridge and he mashes it up, brings it and the heating pad to the couch, where she’s sitting, desperately trying to keep the kitten warm and comfortable.

He sinks to his knees in front of her, a moment passing between them that he thinks might have held more meaning for him than her, and he arranges everything on her lap, lifting the kitten onto the heating pad, dipping his fingers into the turkey and holding them out for the kitten to sniff and eat.

Thankfully, he does, little raspy tongue like sandpaper on his skin.

"Do you think he'll be okay?" She asks.

“Well he has an appetite.” He shrugs. "Up to him, I guess."

She nods but he doesn't think she believes him. He doesn’t blame her. Death doesn’t care what mortals want. Why would it?

Later, when the turkey is mostly gone and the kitten has settled, he stands up, knees cracking and he shrugs off his coat. The bracelet tumbles out of his pocket and onto the floor and for a second both of them just stare at it, and then he picks it up and puts it away again.

Something flickers in her eyes, but they both pretend not to notice.

"He survived a stormwater drain in the dead of winter," he says, voice less casual than he hoped. "I'd say he's tough."

She says something derisive about tough boys under her breath which he doesn't catch and doesn't ask her to repeat.

He gets the gist of it. He doesn't need anything else.

"I hope he makes it." She says softly.

"Me too, my girl. Me too."

~~~

"Will you stay? Please?"

Of course he'll stay. You don't put something like a half dead kitten on someone and disappear into the night without seeing it through.

So he stays. He keeps vigil. He moves onto the couch, puts an arm around her shoulders and watches while she dozes, listens to her breathing become slow and regular, and later she does the same for him. 

The kitten lies sleeping on her lap, body warm and whiskers twitching and he swears in the early hours of the morning he hears it purr.

~~~

It's 6am and the kitten is on the floor, playing with his shoelaces and kicking his boots with its back feet. It's been into the bathroom too to pick a fight with the toilet rolls. The current score is kitten: 2; toilet roll: 0.

It bounces high into the air, chases a crumpled up piece of tinfoil on a string and they're both laughing as it falls over its own feet and tries to climb the curtains.

She wants to keep him. He doesn't know why he thought it would go any other way.

"Will you stay?" She asks.

The sky is bright and cold and snow is backed up on the sidewalks. He takes his normal route home.


	3. Chapter 3

_ "It shouldn't have taken this long. _ I _ shouldn’t have taken this long." _

_ "It took as long as it needed to." _

_ The cat hops onto the bed, squeaks at them and then throws himself down on the pillow next to Frank's head, where he proceeds to purr so loudly the whole room seems to vibrate. _

_ They share a smile, Frank even snorts, but then some of the light goes out of his eyes as he takes her hand and brings it to his lips. _

_ Her bracelet glimmers in the moonlight and he holds it between his thumb and forefinger, turns it around on her wrist slowly, deep in thought. _

_ "I was an asshole." _

_ It’s a statement, not a confession - forgiveness may or may not be required. _

_ “I think there were things we needed to do first - both of us. We needed to be ready and sure so we could make it right.” She leans in and kisses his cheek, stubble rough against her lips. “I know I did." _

_ "Yeah, maybe” his voice is low, unconvinced, and he’s still fiddling with her bracelet. “Either way I was an asshole." _

_ "You know I’ve forgiven you," she says as the cat headbutts his jaw. _

_ "No," he shakes his head. "I don't want you to forgive me. I haven’t earned it.” _

_ Except he has. A million billion times. _

_ But, much like her ability to tear him apart, she suspects that this lack of forgiveness has a deeper, darker purpose. Somewhere in his head, in his brain - still so brilliant and still so broken by the bullet lodged inside it - he thinks that somehow this manufactured debt ties them together and he can spend the rest of his life paying it back to her. _

_ It makes him feel safe. _

_ Sometimes it scares her how easily she understands him. _

_ “Okay,” she says.”You earn it then.” _

~~~

Sunday. Church. Another service he'll never remember for the words.

She's there, hand resting on his belly, breath tickling his neck. She's relaxed, warm and he should be too. After all, she hasn’t decided to be done with him, she hasn’t come to her senses and realised he’s no good and that any man who would refuse her isn’t worth her attention anyway. 

She also doesn’t hold the fact that he’s left her to care for a stray kitten against him. 

He doesn’t think Karen Page holds anything against him at all.

Even so, he feels like he's running out of time. 

The kitten _ is _doing well though. He’s shredded her floor rug and yowls whenever she puts the record player on. At night her feet, under the covers, are both worthy opponents and easy prey. He’s sweet and he snuggles with her when she gets home, follows her around the apartment like a shadow. She's called him Nico. 

"After Old Nick?"

"Nicodemus," she says and he chuckles. It’s a good name.

He puts his arm around her and rests his head on hers, stares at the wooden pieta as the priest drones on about something or other in the background.

He's running out of time.

~~~

Winter becomes spring and the rains wash the spilled blood out of Hell’s Kitchen. David finds another cartel which was involved in distributing the cargo from Kandahar, and Frank puts them down one by one.

It doesn’t feel like it’s for Maria anymore. Or Lisa. Or Junior.

It feels both bigger and smaller than that, instinctual on some level, ideological on another.

He wonders when he became more animal than human. 

Karen knows about it. She sees it on his hands and smells it on his clothes on those rare Sunday nights he doesn’t have time to clean up before going to the church. She tells him it doesn’t matter but he knows it does. 

Something’s changing. _ Evolving. _

He can feel it in the way she touches him, see it in the added layer of hurt he put in her eyes.

_ I love you. I love you. It means everything. _

_ I wish it could mean more. _

~~~

_ They're in the shower, the water hot and hard on their skin. He's got her against the tiles, but she's off balance and slipping. He doesn’t seem to care though and he lifts her leg over his hip, plants his free arm against the wall next to her head and arches backwards so she has room to manoeuvre her hand between their bodies. _

_ "Do it, Karen," he rumbles. _

_ She angles an arm around his neck and he rests his head on her shoulder watching as her fingers slide between her thighs. _

_ She's always liked it like this - him inside her while she works herself towards her climax; his eyes hard and jaw slack as her follows the movements of her fingers, whispering the sweetest filth in her ear. _

_ He likes it too. They’ve spent hours in her bed with him asking her to show him, studying her as touches and teases herself, while his hands glide, soft as feathers, over her skin. Sometimes she’s not sure what gets her there faster - her hands or his, the throbbing or the goosebumps. _

_ She shouts his name as she comes and he slams into her again, knees buckling as he falls apart, trying to stop himself from sliding and shield her head from the glass door as she arches backwards. _

_ She's not sure he's successful on either count. _

_ The water rains down like a baptism. _

~~~

Nicodemus grows - she brings him pictures - and he's delighted when he sees how the wet scrap of a kitten has turned into a lean, sleek cat, with sharp eyes and a tail like a feather duster.

He's running out of time. 

~~~

He sees her having coffee with Murdock once. She’s laughing and Red has a rare smile on his face too. They look happy, content, as if they’ve found some kind of equilibrium with one another.

He tells himself again that he wouldn’t stand in their way if that’s what she wanted. At the same time he also knows that his mere presence in her life is an obstacle to their potential romance in and of itself.

He knows deep in his bones he needs to end it once and for all.

Or he doesn't.

There's always the other option. Her open window, a sleek cat, the smell of cinnamon and vanilla in the air.

_ Stay. _

For the first time that feels like a possibility.

~~~

A moody spring turns into a mild summer that’s over almost before it starts. He swears that they went from the heavy April rains straight into the autumn chill, with pumpkin spice in the air and orange leaves crunching under his boots as he stalks the city.

He misses church once the entire year and he tries not to think too hard on the fact that he’s attended more sermons now than in his whole life put together - and he doesn’t remember one of them.

Still, that time he misses, it changes everything again.

He’s not an asshole about it. He sends her a message to let her know that something’s come up and he can’t make it. By something, he means he’s worked his way up through the final remnants of the cartel and he has a chance of chopping off the head of the snake.

And he does. It’s not easy, it’s not safe, but by the time he’s done, all that’s left of the entire operation are seven bodies at the bottom of the Hudson, blood smeared in a side alley and no rain to wash it away.

He’s wounded too. His face bashed and bruised beyond recognition, lip thick and numb, eye swollen shut. His ears are ringing and his ankle is twisted, blood soaking his shirt from a stab wound in his shoulder and another across his ribs.

He staggers home, doesn’t trust himself to drive, barely trusts himself to walk. He hopes for oblivion and comes close to finding it.

~~~

“Karen? Karen, you gotta listen to me. I need to tell you something.”

_ “Frank? Frank, what’s going on?” _

“I love you, Karen, so much.”

_ “Where are you?” _

“You think of me when you can. Not too much though. Not too much. Ain’t worth it.”

_ “Where are you? Are you okay? You’re scaring me.” _

“Yeah, it’s good. All good.”

_ “Where the fuck are you Frank? What happened?” _

“God, I love you and I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

_ “What the hell is going on? Tell me where you are!” _

“I should have tried to make it work, I should have… there would have been a way once.”

_ “WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU? WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED?” _

You happened… you did.

His phone falls to the floor and the screen shatters with a loud crack.

~~~

Vicodin. Ibuprofen. Codeine.

He knows he shouldn’t mix them, but somehow he’s ended up with two of each in the medicine cabinet.

He figures he’s strong enough to deal with the consequences.

Or he isn’t.

He’s not sure it should matter, except he knows it does. It matters to her, and when things matter to her, the universe doesn’t give a fuck about what he wants.

~~~

She’s there when he wakes up. 

Her hair shines in the weak morning sun and her eyes are blue as the ocean and just as stormy.

He doesn’t believe it at first, convinced entirely she is a hallucination of a broken, fevered mind. She’s no more real than his visions of Maria and her blue flower dress, him pulling the trigger and her blood exploding all over his face.

But then there’s a cool cloth on his forehead, and she’s saying something, hand warm on his chest. 

The sheets are stained with blood but the wounds on his arms and ribs are closed, deftly pulled together with butterfly stitches and covered in clean bandages.

“How did you…?” his throat feels like he’s been gargling with razorblades and he chokes on the words.

She cradles his head, grabs a glass of water with a straw from his bedside table and brings it to his lips.

“Shhh,” she says. “It doesn’t matter how. I’m here now.”

But oh god, it does matter. It does.

She kisses his face, and when he falls asleep, he doesn’t hurt anymore.

~~~

She brings Nicodemus and they stay with him for a week, while he gets well. 

It’s the best days he’s had since his entire world disappeared in a hail of bullets and some painted ponies.

She’s gentle and sweet. She reads to him, tells him about her day, tends to him and makes sure his wounds are healing. 

He's both horrified and completely unsurprised by how easy it is to get used to it, how little things feel important and overwhelming: her toothbrush in the bathroom, her shampoo in the shower, the big fluffy black and white striped socks she wears to slide around the apartment, and the way she brings him coffee and snacks when he's feeling well enough to get out of bed and watch TV.

One night, they’re sitting on the couch and she’s stroking his hair, trailing her fingers through the heavy curls, running her hand along his chin where his whiskers are growing long and thick.

“You trying for the whole hipster thing again?”

He snorts. “Still fucking want that man bun.”

“Gonna start oiling your beard too?” she asks. “Braiding it maybe?”

He smiles. “Get myself an Instagram to take pictures of all the raspberry pumpkin spice, chocolate sprinkle frappuccino lattes I buy. Hashtag HipsterPunisher.”

For a second, her smile is the brightest thing in the whole world.

“We’d better do something about it then.” She combs her fingers through his beard and he shivers. 

“I’ll shave when my arm is working like an arm again.”

She bites her lip, eyes sparkling and he knows what she is going to say a second before she does. 

“I could do it for you.”

It feels like she’s managed - single handedly - to stop the world with those six words.

There’s actually a long moment he considers it. She is, after all, the only person in the alive who he trusts enough to take a blade to his throat.

But then he thinks of him and her in his bathroom, him stripped to the waist and her in some strappy tank top so she doesn’t get covered in hair and foam. She’s leaning over him, while he willingly puts his whole life in her hands. He imagines the smell of her, the feel of the razor scraping across his skin, the way she breathes in and out and how her eyes don’t leave his.

He’s not strong enough for that. He doesn’t think anyone is.

“Nah, I’ll be a hipster for a bit longer. If it gets too long I’ll wax my mustache.” He touches her hand, gives her a rueful smile and hopes his ill attempt at humour disguises the gravity of the situation. 

It doesn’t though. Her smile fades and she looks at him sadly. She sees right through him - she always has.

He takes her hand, squeezes it. “I’m glad you’re here Karen. Thank you. You’re too good to me.”

He means it but at the same time it’s moments like these that make it feel like slow torture. Having her here, with him, in the same space at the same time, hearing her in the kitchen, the small living area, the sound of her footsteps on the linoleum outside and her key slipping into lock like she belongs here - it just highlights the fact that it’s all temporary. And he’s too wounded to appreciate it while it lasts.

He wants her to stay and he’s living on borrowed time.

He dreads the day that he needs to finally pay up.

~~~

He doesn’t have to wait long. He goes into the red the night she leaves.

She’s sitting on the bed next to him, Nicodemus curled into a ball on his lap, purring loudly. She’s seeing to his wounds, cleaning them out, replacing old bandages with fresh ones. Her hands are soft and light against him and his entire body is covered in gooseflesh.

And then she suddenly stops and looks him in the eye.

“We could have this,” she says. “We both want it.”

He tries to keep his words soft when he speaks - there’s no reason to be hurtful - but his voice is thick and husky, and it gives away other secrets that aren’t really secrets at all. 

“My girl, we can’t.” 

It’s the truth, but it feels like a lie.

Her eyes narrow and her jaw hardens. “Why?”

“You know why, Karen.”

“I think you need to spell it out then.” Clipped. Tense. “You’re gonna need to say the words.”

She’s cruel. Karen Page is the cruelest woman he knows.

"I want to keep you safe," he says. “It’s all I care about.”

She dabs at the wound on his arm, smooths a clean bandage over it for the last time.

"Then keep yourself safe.”

The sound of his front door closing behind her is one of the worst sounds he's ever heard.

~~~

_ Stay. _

The first night she’s gone feels like hell on earth. He misses her with a kind of bone-shattering fierceness, his entire body and mind focused entirely on what’s gone with no room for anything else. He feels empty, hollowed out, like someone took everything he is away and left him with nothing but a skin and a voice that tricks people into thinking he’s Frank Castle.

_ Stay. _

He doesn't sleep. He dials her number a hundred times without letting it ring. 

Her shampoo is still there but her toothbrush is gone.

_ Stay. _

It's no longer a possibility. It's a necessity.

~~~

_ “You know what this one is?” _

_ He touches his right bicep, where two scars now cross like an X. He’s pointing to the older one and her heart breaks. _

_ She feels the wires between her fingers, the hard outline of the bomb digging into the small of her back, the smell of Lewis’s sweat and fear hangs in the air more pungent than the gunsmoke. _

(Die like a soldier. Die like a soldier.)

_ She wraps a towel around his shoulders and then puts her lips to the scar. _

_ “Ten,” she says. _

_ He shakes his head. “Another special one. I didn’t even feel it.” _

_ “I did,” she says firmly, “It’s a ten.” _

~~~

The church is cold and the parishioners few and far between, barely enough of them to make a sound when it's time to sing the hymns. Outside there's a storm, but it's not as big as the one in his heart.

He almost didn’t expect her to come, but she did. She hasn’t touched him though and when he put his arm around her shoulders, she stiffened and he let his hand fall back into lap.

Even so, he doesn’t know what the sermon was about. He never does.

When church is over, she gets up to leave and he knows he is now - officially - out of time. 

He gets to decide, right here, right now.

Except he’s already decided.

As she takes a step away, he wraps his fingers around her hand it and tugs her back. 

She seems surprised and it kills him that he’s given her so much reason to doubt.

But no more. No more doubts.

He reaches up, touches a strand of her hair which shines like fire.

"We can't do this anymore," he says and her eyes widen so he rushes to explain. "I mean here, like this. With you and me. It's no good and you deserve better. I want to try… you and me, and it’s crazy, because I’m what I am but I want to and--"

He cuts off as she puts a finger to his lips and shakes her head. 

She looks down at him for a very long time and then touches his face, palm warm like a little flame against his cheek.

"Be better then," she says. "Be better."


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything I write is always longer than it needs to be.
> 
> If you like it, please let me know.

He thinks about kissing her. Really, truly kissing her. None of these butterfly kisses against her hair or on her hands. He thinks about what her lips will feel like under his and what her mouth tastes like. He imagines her tongue brushing his, running over his teeth, he imagines his stubble scraping her skin, their faces wet with saliva because they’re both sloppy and messy and neither of them care.

He imagines the weight of her on top of him, the places where she’s soft and he’s hard fitting together like puzzle pieces; her hips against his palms, her legs, long and smooth and silky, her breasts on his chest.

But first, he has to do it right. He has to take it slow, although even he can see the ridiculousness of that considering he’s just spent the best part of a year holding her hand in the shadows and nothing more.

Still, it’s no excuse. She’s a lady, and he, despite the blood and the scars and the sin, is a gentleman. He will give her the very best he can for as long as she allows him to.

~~~

The Tuesday after she tells him to be better, he turns up outside _ Nelson, Murdock & Page _ with a bunch of white roses and a skew smile, and asks her if he can take her out for coffee.

"I'll go anywhere with you," she says and even though he hopes that isn't true, he finds it hard to worry when she puts her arms around his neck and pulls him close, presses her forehead to his and doesn't seem to care one little bit who might see them.

Karen Page is - and always has been - a gift he doesn't deserve.

He's chosen a small hole-in-the-wall bakery quite far outside the city. It's a long drive through the countryside but it's worth it for both the coffee and the anonymity it offers, and they sit there in a booth in the corner, grinning like idiots as he twines their fingers together and traces the lines and shape of her hands.

The weather is bad, wind rushing through the trees outside and a storm brewing in the distance but inside there’s a fire burning and Karen's smile has always been able to light up the dark. 

They talk about Maria, about his kids. She doesn’t seem to find this remotely disconcerting and steers the conversation back to them when he starts to meander from it. He wonders if he should find that odd - that the woman he loves wants to talk about the other woman he loves - but Karen has always been pragmatic about his life before even when he hasn't. _ They're part of you, _ she tells him, _ part of who you are and I'm here because of who you are. _

He guesses that's one way of looking at it.

Still there’s something else as well and he has the distinct impression she’s searching his words for answers to questions she hasn’t asked.

He wants to know about her family too, where she’s from, who she was before _ Nelson & Murdock _. She demurs, and he realises that he might just be playing the same game that she is.

He does get a little from her though - some small yet simultaneously very big things. Her mother is dead and so is her brother. Her and her father don’t really talk. When she gives these snippets of information she watches him closely, head cocked and eyes shrewd and he feels like he’s being tested but he’s not sure whether he passes or not.

He wants to ask but he also wants to let this play out and see where it leads by itself.

The evening wears on and turns into night, and when he drives her home it's along a winding country road lined with trees that would be beautiful in the spring.

_ Be better. Be better. _

He can. He is.

All he wants to do is prove it to her.

~~~

It’s pouring when they get to her apartment and she’s forgotten her umbrella so he covers their heads with his coat and together they run up the stairs into the foyer of her building, splashing through puddles and soaking their shoes and jeans, so they're wet all the way to their knees. 

She’s laughing and so is he and when they stop, he pulls her close and rests his forehead against hers.

Her skin is chilly when he kisses her cheek, but it makes him feel light and warm inside all the same.

“I love you,” she whispers and he feels like his heart will burst. “I love you. I love you. Do you believe me?”

“Say it again.”

She buries her face is his neck. “How many times?”

“Just once.”

And then again and again and again, every minute of every day for the rest of our lives.

~~~

The cold sets in with a vengeance in early October, the wind blistering and days dreary and dark. But even the weather and the hell that is Hell's Kitchen can't put out the fire inside of him. 

He knows it’s dangerous - there are a million reasons not to get caught up in this thing, but he finds it hard to care. He tells himself he can protect her and he can love her, and somewhere along the line, he can carve out a little happiness for himself too. 

He tells himself a lot of things.

They stop their Sunday night rendezvous in favour of something more open, more real. There's no point in looking for excuses they no longer need. But, at the same time, they keep it slow, gentle, both unwilling to force things forward any faster than they need to go. 

And oddly, despite her forthrightness about everything including her feelings and her obvious, if misguided, attraction to him, he senses that there’s something else going on with her, some more tangible reason why she’s holding back and isn't ready to throw herself right into this.

He doesn't blame her. She's out of her mind for even considering taking up with someone like him and maybe careful thought is something they both need. At the same time he suspects this is more about her and less about him and the trail of blood and bodies he leaves behind him.

It doesn’t matter. She’s waited years for him to get over himself. He’ll wait forever for her if that’s what it takes. 

He is, after all, being better.

He surprises her one Friday by waiting for her outside her apartment with a picnic basket in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other.

She looks him up and down and then her face breaks into a smile.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just takes a bit of getting used to, seeing you at the front door.”

“Hey, I’ve used the front door before.”

“To bring me a half dead cat.”

“Fair enough.”

“Guess you had to start sometime… also it’s less drafty in my hall than on the fire escape.”

“I don’t get cold.”

“Yeah, sure you don’t you big, strong man.”

He laughs and she unlocks her door, pushes Nicodemus back inside with the side of her foot. The cat is so big now, fur thick and soft and his purring is still loud enough to make the whole room vibrate.

They move the coffee table, set a blanket on the floor and light candles. He pours wine and sets out the food: cheese, dips, flatbreads, cured meats.

"Picnic in a middle of a hailstorm," she says. “What did I do to deserve this?” 

He doesn’t know what to tell her. It’s because she’s wonderful and amazing and she loves him in a way he can say without even a hint of guilt, that he’s never been loved before.

“You waited,” he says. “And you didn’t need to.”

She grins at him and hooks an arm around his neck. 

“You didn’t really want me to go.”

~~~

_ The truth is, she was afraid too. Maybe more than he ever was. _

~~~

“Tell me something that scares you.” 

She’s lying with her head in his lap while he leans against the couch and plays absently with her hair. She’s warm and lazy and her eyes are half closed. There’s a record spinning silently in the player and neither of them have the energy or inclination to get up to change it.

He looks down at her, traces the line of her jaw with his fingertip. “Anything?”

“Anything at all,” she says and then opens her eyes. “Tell me the thing that scares you the most about you and me.”

“You already know,” he says. “I’m scared something will happen to you because of me. Because of this.”

She shakes her head. “That’s been done before. Be original.”

Apparently Karen Page will only suffer his bullshit to a point, and after that all bets are off.

He leans back, rests an arm on the seat of the couch and looks at the ceiling, and takes a breath. It’s a difficult question because as he’s come to realise over the years that he’s known her, there is nothing about him that scares her. She knows him inside out and that means knowing exactly what he’s capable of and making peace with it - something he, himself, has not been able to do.

Nothing that scares him scares her, and he's not sure how to handle that.

He sighs. 

There is, of course, only one thing then.

“Come on,” she says. “You can tell me.”

He puts his hand back in her hair, combs his fingers through it and she shivers.

“I know,” he says. “But give me this one second, before I fuck everything up.”

He’s not really sure if that’s possible right now, but he’s been given a lot of cosmic leeway when it comes to him and her and he wonders just how long his luck will hold.

She takes his hand, brings it to her lips and then sits up and turns to face him.

“You’re not gonna fuck anything up. You couldn’t.” She cradles his head in her hands and puts her forehead on his. “I promise.”

He huffs, touches her cheek. It’s pointless to deny her anything. It always has been.

Chaste kiss on her lips, thumb swiping across her jaw, hand coming to rest lightly on her throat. He looks into her eyes, lets himself drown for a second, but just a second.

“I still love Maria,” he tells her. “I don’t think I’m ever going to stop. I miss her and I would turn back the clock in a heartbeat if I could.”

She frowns and cocks her head, but her smile doesn’t falter.

"Why does that scare you?"

"Because of me, because of you. Because you ain't some second choice and I don't want you to feel like you are."

_ You have my whole heart, you have every shattered piece that's left of it. _

“I don't and maybe I haven't told you, but I don't expect you to wake up one day and not love her. I wouldn't want that."

Of course she wouldn’t. Because Karen Page is the best person he knows.

“If you could do that with her,” she continues, “then you could do that with me too, and then everything here is pointless and you’re not the person I thought.”

He swallows hard and takes her hand, twines their fingers together.

“I could never stop loving her - I don’t want to. But you were right - I can’t keep loving people in my dreams.”

“No,” she shakes her head and her hair gleams like gold. “You can’t.”

She is everything. 

She pulls him into her arms and he buries his head in her throat, hands gripping her sweater and he isn't surprised when a sob rips out of his throat. She kisses his head, holds him tighter.

"It's okay," she says. "Whatever you feel isn't wrong."

Apparently the priests were right. Confession does cleanse the soul… except maybe they got confused about some of the details. Maybe the whole faceless agent of the Almighty is less effective than it should be.

“How are you so good?” he whispers into her skin.

“I’m not good.” She kisses his hair, runs her fingers through the curls he’s left to grow. “Don’t think that I am.”

“You’re smart and you’re strong and you’re the bravest person I know.”

He feels her smile against his temple. “None of those are the same as good.”

He disagrees, but he’s not going to fight her on it.

~~~

_ He scrapes his teeth along her hip and it makes her gasp. His sly smile tells her he's delighted by her reaction. _

_ "You like that." _

_ It's not a question. _

_ "I'm not sure if I like it as much as you like doing it." She says coyly and he bites down on his bottom lip to stifle a laugh. _

_ "I'm so sorry about all these terrible things I do to you." _

_ She nods. "The way you corrupt me." _

_ "It's criminal." He agrees. _

_ "I used to be a good girl." _

_ He barks out a laugh and she pretends to be offended. _

_ “Well, you know what they say? About good girls.” He runs a hand down her inner thigh, tugs her legs apart. _

_ “What do they say?” she says laying a hand against his cheek. _

_ He raises his head, kisses her fingers through a sly smile and then moves to plant a chain of kisses down from her belly button. _

_ “Good girls go to heaven but…” he trails off as his tongue swipes firmly over her clit, making her sigh and arch against his mouth. _

_ “Bad boys bring heaven to you…” she finishes for him. _

_ He chuckles, massive shoulders shaking between her thighs. _

_ “Yeah,” he rumbles, as he slides two fingers inside her, pressing upwards so that her skin feels like it’s on fire, and her breath catches in her throat. “We try.” _

_ He lowers his head back to the apex of her thighs. _

_ He never lies to her. _

~~~

The thing is though, he can fuck everything up. And he does. Without even knowing it.

~~~

“Your turn. What scares you?”

She sips her wine. “Roaches… and I really don’t like snakes.”

“Come on,” he touches her nose and she laughs but there’s something in it that isn’t happy. There’s a wariness to her sometimes and when she cocks her head and looks at him, he can’t help but feel the same way he does when he thinks she’s testing him.

She puts her glass back on the table. “Okay, okay. Spiders… and crocodiles and…”

“Karen,” he says gently. “Karen, stop.”

A strange sort of silence follows - it’s not exactly strained and it’s not exactly easy. Her smile fades too, but not completely and she bites her bottom lip.

He’s always known she has her secrets. Since the day he met her, there’s been something unknowable about her, something that keeps hidden deep inside her. He knows that her quest to find him justice when he didn’t deserve it and absolution when he didn’t want it is part of that. But now, for the first time, it feels like there’s something more and things have changed. She’s added an extra layer of secrecy to this darkness that he - specifically _ he _ \- cannot peel back.

“Come on. You can tell me.”

She regards him for a long time, and then turns around so she can lean back against his chest and link their arms at her waist.

“Not today Frank,” she says. “It can wait.”

~~~

_ "What are you thinking about?" _

_ He’s lying on his back and with his arms under his head and she’s resting her head on his shoulder. She can hear his heart beating hard in his chest, and his breath is coming out fast and hard. _

_ She allows herself a sly smile. Apparently there’s a little bit of heaven in bad girls too. Although the obscenities she just managed to get him to express didn’t sound very holy to her, and the half-moon bruises on her hips from his nails aren’t exactly a sign of piety. Devotion yes, but piety no. _

_ And she’s fairly certain the church would have something to say about the devotion part. _

_ "Father Francis Castiglione, man of the cloth." _

_ He sighs and rolls his eyes. "You ain't gonna let this go, are you?" _

_ She shakes her head and he scowls. _

_ "Okay," he takes a deep breath. "What do you want to know?" _

_ There's so many things she wants to know. She thinks they could spend hours talking about them, but he's sleepy and soft, his words a little slurred and she knows her time is limited before he drifts off. _

_ “Okay. What gives priests the power to grant absolution from sin? To decide on penance? Did they teach you that?” _

_ “You know, I wasn’t in seminary for that long, Karen Page. I don’t know all the answers.” _

_ “Guess,” she says lifting her head to look at him. “Guess what they would have said if you’d asked them.” _

_ He sighs. “God, I suppose. Seems logical.” _

_ “And if you don’t believe in God? What if you don’t believe in sin?” _

_ “Then you’re probably not a Catholic.” _

_ “That’s not really the point.” _

_ He shrugs. “Yeah, okay. I guess it’s the church then that gives them the power.” _

_ “So you mean the bishops and the cardinals? The Pope even?” _

_ He gives her a dark look and his mouth twists into an exasperated smile. _

_ “Yeah, maybe. Does it matter?” He moves so that he can rest a hand on the small of her back, trails his fingertips up her spine in that way that makes her shiver. “Why are you so worried about who allows it anyway?” _

_ She considers this, turns the question over in her head and picks at it the same way she would pick at any mystery or story or case. She takes away the unknowables, the unprovables, works through the problem from the first step to the last. _

_ When she gets right down to it, it’s a surprisingly easy conundrum to solve. _

_ She lays her head back down on his shoulder, drapes her arm across his chest. _

_ “It’s not the bishops or the cardinals. It’s not even the church or God.” _

_ “Who is it then?” _

_ “It’s us,” she says, and his fingers spasm against her skin. “We want someone to have that power so badly that we give it to them. We decide they have it because we’re scared of what would happen if there was no one to forgive us.” _

_ “So what does that mean then?” _

_ She kisses his neck and collarbones. _

_ He smells of soap and of her and when she kisses his lips, he tastes of her too. _

_ “It means we get to choose.” _

~~~

He tries not to overdo it, but he finds it hard to stop himself. In a way it was like this with Maria too. He was desperately in love, overwhelmed and almost giddy from it, wanting to spend every second with her, showering her in gifts and ultimately making a total ass of himself. And somehow she found that charming enough to win her over.

There’s another side to this though. Of course him and Karen are older and more world weary, and in many ways what they have is both more delicate and far rougher than the dizziness of youth. But there’s something else - the desperation is heavier, darker, and it feels like there’s more at stake. And The Punisher, which existed almost entirely on the sidelines with him and Maria, is placed front and centre with him and Karen, and somehow that's right where he should be.

It’s not better or worse. It’s just different.

They have more coffee dates, more dinners. Dinah even invites them to a Halloween party at her place and they show up for a few hours.

He doesn’t dress up but Curt tells him that he’s his own costume anyway.

“Nothing scarier than The Punisher.”

But then Karen’s at his side, dressed in a long black satin robe, which he hasn't quite decided means she's a witch or a priestess, and doesn't really want to know either.

She can be both. She can be neither. It's all the same.

“That’s not true,” she says. "Punisher isn't scary."

Except he is, and again he's reminded that nothing that scares him about himself scares her.

But it's a party and those thoughts are too big and too heavy for the celebrations.

Curt shakes his head. “I wish you two would just get on with it,” he says as he walks away. “You’re wasting daylight.”

~~~

It’s snowing again, winter having arrived without announcement or preamble. They’ve gone to the same bakery as before, and as they’re starting to think about leaving, he notices the first snowflakes of the season landing on the ground.

He’s about to say something, but she’s already looking out the window, palm pressed to the glass.

Sure it's just snow, and it's a pain in the ass, except right now, in this moment with her, it's so much more.

He tosses some dollar bills on the table, takes her hand, leads her outside, where the snowflakes swirl around them like fairy dust. 

Her eyes sparkle like sapphires and she holds out her hands to him and pulls him close, wraps her arms around his neck tightly and presses her lips to his cheek.

“Look Frank,” she says. “It’s so pretty.”

It is. It really is.

"Not as pretty as you,” he rumbles, and when she laughs, he does too, lifting her and swinging her around.

"That's almost romantic, Frank Castle. Cheesy as hell, but romantic."

"Told you I'm an old fashioned kind of guy."

"You are," she says, putting a hand against his neck.

The snowflakes melt on her cheeks, shining like happy tears. Her eyes are wide and she’s searching his face for something he’s not even sure he has. 

But apparently he does.

There’s an exact moment when she finds it; the background noise fades along with everything else, no cars, no wind, no patrons making their way in and out of the coffeeshop. Just them and the snow and another fundamental change that he wants to hold onto and never ever let go.

And then just as suddenly something breaks between them and she’s grabbing his arms, nails digging into his skin through his coat and sweater and he cups the back of her head, lips nudging hers open, tongue sliding between her teeth.

He’s spent so much time thinking about kissing her, imagining how she would taste, the warmth of her mouth, the scrape of her teeth ... and she’s nothing and everything like he thought she would be. She’s soft and sweet but she’s also insistent and potent, tongue rough against his, hands turning into little claws that pierce through his coat and sweater. 

She moans into his mouth and arches under him, almost losing her balance, and leaving him to grapple with them to make sure they don’t both go crashing to the hard, dirty gravel of the parking area. She doesn’t seem to care about any of that. Her fingers twist frantically in his hair as he drags her up, hand closing on her hip as she surges forward so that he’s backed up against the side of his truck.

“Jesus Christ, Karen, Jesus fucking Christ.” he chokes between kisses. “You’re…” but then her mouth is back on his and her hands are snaking into his coat, brushing against his belly and making him tremble and he doesn’t remember what he was going to say.

It’s hard to breathe and hard to think and he doesn’t care about anything but her mouth and her hands and her body - the way she’s pressing up against him so that he knows she can feel the outline of him - thick and hard and throbbing - against her hip.

She’s saying his name and he takes the opportunity to tear his lips from hers, brings them to her throat, tongue against her pulse.

“I want you,” she whispers and her skin prickles under his hands. 

He groans, her words turning his blood to magma, and simultaneously making him shiver.

“Want you too,” he says fumbling in his pocket for his car keys with one hand, while the other creeps under her blouse, brushes skin softer than silk. “Want you so much.”

It’s been so long and they’ve wasted so much time and not for the first time, he wants to kick his own ass for not going to straight to her after he put Billy Russo in the hospital and Madani let him walk free. 

He made a mess. He made mistakes and all he wants to do is fix them.

_ Be better. Be better. _

But then just as suddenly as she started, she stops, lays a hand on his chest and takes a step backwards.

His hand is still under her coat and blouse and she makes no move to push it away, but even so, he freezes, hand on her ribs, thumb just touching the satin cup of her bra.

“What is it?”

_ What’s wrong? Tell me what I did and how I can fix it. Show me how to be better. _

She cocks her head, narrows her eyes. It’s that look he knows so well. The one that’s full of secrets and regrets and shame. She bites her lip, looks away very briefly and then squares her shoulders.

“Before we do… this … anything, I need to tell you something,” she says. “Something about me.”

He frowns. “Okay.”

She nods slowly. “And then, if you still want to, I'd like you to go somewhere with me. Somewhere important.”

It’s such an easy thing to promise. Everything she asks is always so easy, even when it’s not.

He puts his forehead on hers, breathes her and cold icy air into his lungs. “Anywhere. Anywhere you like.”

“Listen to what I have to say first. You might change your mind.”

He covers her hand on his chest, brings her fingers to his lips. “Nothing would change my mind.”

“This might.”

“_ Nothing _ would change my mind,” he repeats.

_ It doesn’t matter. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of your sins. I never lie to you. Never ever. _

For a second, she looks like she might trust him.

“Okay,” she says. “But not here. Take me home.”

And then she kisses him again, hard and long and desperate, like she thinks it will be the last time.

~~~

_ She falls asleep in his arms to the sound of bells. _


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Be kind, I'm not good with action scenes...
> 
> Thank you all for the support for this fic. The end is in sight, but I am not going to even try and predict the number of chapters anymore. I fail too horribly each time.

He never gets as far as home.

The road back into New York is dark and mostly empty, and he puts the radio on and rests his hand on her knee - tentatively at first, but then she covers his hand with hers and he takes it as an invitation to sweep his fingers lightly along her inner thigh.

He tries not to think too much, not to get ahead of himself and wonder into the strange territory of what happens when they're back at her place and alone. She wants to talk, so they'll talk. That's the most important thing, and then afterwards, he guesses the possibilities are endless.

Up ahead an old beat up looking Toyota sedan is sitting on the shoulder of the road, protruding out into oncoming traffic.

"Asshole," he says as he veers around it. "Who the hell parks there?"

She glances out of the window at the car. "There's someone inside," she says and he grunts, keeps his eyes fixed on the road and his hand heavy on her knee.

They've only gone another few hundred yards though when he notices bright lights in his rearview mirror, and when he looks into his reflectors, he sees the sedan barrelling up behind them, weaving in and out of the lane, accelerating and then just as it looks like it’s about to pass, pulling back so suddenly that Frank isn’t sure how he missed the truck’s tail light.

"What the hell are you doing dickhead?" he mutters under his breath as he pulls the truck to the shoulder of the road so the driver can pass.

But he doesn’t. Instead, he swerves around behind them, spinning his wheels, backing off slightly before speeding enough so that he touches the truck's back bumper.

They lurch forward and even though they're both wearing seatbelts, he instinctively throws an arm across Karen's chest to stop her hitting the dash.

"Jesus Christ, Frank," her voice is a strained whisper. "What is his problem?"

"It'll be okay," he says. "Just some fucking asshole who doesn't know how to drive."

He winds down the window, waves the sedan on, but all that does is cause the driver to put on his brights and lean on the horn.

"Where's the fucking fire?" He shouts. "Or you just wanna drive in my goddamn ass?"

The car swerves right, guns the engine until Frank sees the the grill in the passenger side-mirror as he tries to overtake on the left.

"Frank…" her voice is low and strained and even though he's doing his best to focus on the road, he doesn't miss the fear in her eyes. "Frank, he's trying to--"

"I know," he says.

_ I know there's a fucking psycho behind us and I don’t fucking know what he wants. _

Up ahead the road meanders gently towards a hill where the shoulder disappears. It's empty and he pulls into the opposite lane, hoping the Toyota will just pass, but even as he's doing it, he knows it's futile. The car slows, and continues at a steady pace, until they're almost at the hill and Frank has to pull back again. 

He glances at the glove compartment and she gets his meaning, reaching into her own purse so that he can see the butt of her .38 in the palm of her hand.

Hopefully it doesn't come to that, and this really is just some asshole kid on a dare who'll lose interest.

And for a second it seems he might get his wish.

Behind him the Toyota seems to be backing off and he breathes a sigh of relief as he sees its lights recedingin the distance. 

His relief is short-lived though. Seconds later, the car is zooming up behind them again, horn blaring and lights flashing. He turns the wheel hard to the left, as the Toyota pulls into the other lane.

"Fucking overtake me, you fucking asshole."

But he doesn't, he backs off again, waits for Frank to get the truck off the shoulder and then speeds up behind them, flashing his lights.

She twists in her seat, tries to see out the rear window.

"He's not trying to drive us off the road," she says and he shakes his head, hands gripping the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turn white. "He's literally just an asshole being an asshole."

"Yeah," he says. "He's just driving like a douchebag. No wonder his fucking car looks like it does."

"Frank," she says. "Frank, just pull over after the hill. Let him go past."

She's right and he nods grimly, accelerates to get over the rise and as he's about to crest it, the sedan pulls out again from behind him and starts edging forward, tires spinning against the gravel.

"Jesus fucking Christ, he's overtaking on an incline," she says

Yeah he is. He most definitely is.

Frank hits the brake, swerves right, and the sedan overtakes as a motorbike comes over the summit from the opposite direction.

He sees everything a second before it happens.

The bike veers onto the gravel on the opposite side of the road, a plume of dust and dirt flaring up behind its wheels, while the sedan skids back into the right lane, clipping Frank's left headlight and making the chassis shudder and the tires squeal as he hits the brake again and turns the steering wheel sharply to the right to avoid the undergrowth and trees dotted along the shoulder.

The sedan isn't so lucky and it plows through the makeshift chicken wire fencing on the side of the road, narrowly misses a sturdy oak and nosedives into a shallow ditch where it eventually comes to a stop.

Karen swears loudly next to him, fingers digging into his arm as he comes to a sudden stop just behind the sedan. They pitch forward in their seats as the seatbelts lock, Karen's hair falling over her face and her hand tight on his forearm.

And then for a blissful second, there's nothing but absolute silence and stillness and his gut twisting painfully as he tries to understand what's just happened.

He takes a deep breath, blinks and turns to look at Karen.

Objectively he knows she's fine, that he avoided an actual collision, that the worst she is, is shaken up, but he can't help that moment of pure terror when he sees she hasn't moved.

"You okay?" He asks, grabbing her shoulder and it feels like an eternity before she nods, and pushes her hair out of her face.

"Yeah, yeah I'm good." 

"You sure?"

He cups the back of her head, searches her face for any scrapes or bruises but finds none.

She nods, hand coming up to grip his arm and, despite the situation, a small _ frisson _of pleasure shoots through him as her nails dig into his skin.

"Yeah? You?"

"I'm fine."

She nods again, eyes wide before she turns her head to look at the sedan.

"Christ," she swears.

_ Christ indeed. _

Across the road, the motorcyclist seems to be no worse for wear. He stands next to his bike, staring over at them and when Frank waves him away, he gives them a shaky thumbs up and disappears into the night. 

"At least he's okay," Karen says. "That could have been a disaster."

He nods, presses a kiss to her forehead and then leans across her and pulls his gun from the glove box, shoves it in the back of his jeans. 

"Stay here," he says as he pushes his door open, but before the words are even finished, she's out of the car too, sparing a brief glance at the front of the truck as they pick their way through the undergrowth..

Luckily the damage doesn't seem too bad, but the same can't be said for the Toyota. Its front fender is crumpled and parts of the side mirror are lying shattered on the road. The back door on the passenger side is mangled and the window shattered - although that looks like it was from a long time ago because someone has stuck a sheet of plastic over the hole with duct tape. It’s coming apart though - little torn bits of plastic dancing in the wind..

"Fucking asshole," Frank mutters under his breath.

As they approach, he hears a voice, slurred and slow but also angry coming from the front seat. There's the sound of the engine turning over two or three times before it sputters and cuts out and then some angry banging on the dashboard.

He takes Karen's hand and moves in front of her.

"If you ain't gonna listen to me the least you could do is stay behind me."

She gives him a dark look but doesn't object and stays put as he taps on the roof and pulls the driver door open.

"Hey buddy," he says conversationally as he leans inside. "You get your licence in a cracker jack box?"

He's not sure what he expected - kids joyriding, some old drunk who sleeps in his car out for a night time drive, partygoers who've had one too many trying to keep their night interesting. Any of these options would be bad, but none as bad as the scene in front of him.

The car is as much of a wreck inside as out, seats torn and dash cracked, beer bottles littered on the floor and the pungent smells of weed and alcohol heavy in the air. He's also not fool enough to think the white streaks on the dash are talcum powder.

He briefly notes a short, stocky bald man right in front of him, draped over the steering wheel, but it's the woman sitting in the passenger seat that grabs his attention.

She's petite and curvy, chestnut hair falling over her shoulders and mascara trailing down her face. She's wearing a thin blue dress and taking deep, gulping breaths as she cradles a baby to her breast, hushing it while it chokes on its own tears.

He blinks, swallows hard as he tries to parse the situation in front of him. There could be dozens of explanations but none of them that come to mind are good.

"Ma'am?" He says. "Are you okay?"

She doesn't answer. She just stares at him for a long time like she’s not sure he’s real and if she's found a saviour or just gone from a bad situation to a worse one. And then Karen steps out from behind him and the woman bursts into tears, clutching the baby closer as she grapples with the door handle, which seems to have been twisted off at its base. 

"I've got this," Karen says and she leaves his side to help the woman get out of the car.

"Be careful," he says and she gives him a quick knowing smile. 

Sometimes it feels like that is all they ever say to one another.

He turns his attention back to the car's interior, but before he can say or do anything more the driver lurches at him, arms outstretched and face screwed up in rage, as he tries to grab at Frank’s waist and drag him to the ground.

He’s slow, uncoordinated and Frank pushes him back into his seat easily. 

He sighs. "Come on, this ain't a fight you're gonna win."

Across from him, Karen's got the woman out and is wrapping her coat around her shoulders, walking her away from the sedan and towards the truck, one hand on her back, the other covering the baby's head. She's talking to her in a low voice and the woman is hiccuping and gulping, but she doesn’t seem to be wounded or hurt and neither does the baby.

He catches Karen’s eye and she nods at him. 

_ You do what you need to do. You sort this out. _

The driver staggers to his feet again, shouting something Frank can't make out, and he tries to swing at him, but loses his balance and crashes into the crumpled metal of the car’s hood.

"Get you…" he slurs.

"All five of me?" 

Another wild swing and Frank rolls his eyes, gives him a hard shove so that he falls to his knees.

"Come on buddy," he says grabbing him in a chokehold and pulling sharply upwards, hushing him as he flails. "Come on."

It isn’t hard. The man is so inebriated that he barely has the wherewithal to stay upright, let alone fight. He panics for a second, eyes bulging and legs kicking uselessly at the dirt, meaty palms beating against Frank's arms and then he goes still and slumps onto the ground, face first.

"You sleep it off, asshole."

He reaches into the car, pulls the keys out of the ignition and heads back to the truck.

~~~

Her name is Ella and the piece of shit with the sore jaw and the heavy foot is Wayne, her husband, although Frank has some thoughts about whether that title is one he deserves.

She sits in the backseat of the truck in Karen's coat, staring at her hands and sobbing as she explains.

They were visiting his parents because Wayne wanted a loan, because he'd pissed all their money away and they needed formula and diapers. And food. And rent. And gas. And lights. 

Unsurprisingly, his parents said no.

"I don't blame them," she says between sobs. "I would have said no too if I could have. All he does is drink it away. Or buy things we don’t need. 

“There’s no food but we’ve got a 49-inch flat screen TV and a PlayStation VR. Gaby needs new onesies for winter, but he went to Vegas last week with his friends and lost his whole paycheck."

She sniffs, wipes at her nose with a shredded tissue.

"What happened then after you left his parents?" Karen's sitting next to him holding the baby to her shoulder. It's awake but quiet and its little fist is opening and closing around her hair, eyes unfocused and spit bubbles running down its chin. She doesn't look particularly awkward, maybe slightly unsure, but not uncomfortable.

In the dim light, the baby's blanket looks like one that Lisa had when they brought her home from the hospital and he squints to see if he can make out the small pink and yellow teddy bears he knows should be there.

"We went to his brother… And they started drinking and smoking weed and… I wanted to get home for the baby but he insisted on driving..." she hiccups. "He was weaving all over the road and that’s when I made him pull over and I told him to stop and that I’d drive…” a breath hitches in her throat. “I said we were scared - I shouldn’t have - it just made him angry, and he said ‘I’ll give you something to be scared about’ and then… well, then he saw you coming and he did this."

She indicates vaguely at the Toyota and dissolves into tears again, covering her face with her hands.

“Hey,” Karen says, putting a hand on her shoulder. “It’s not your fault. You hear me? You didn’t do this. He was going to do this anyway.”

Ella doesn’t say anything, and continues to sob.

He shares a look with Karen and they both frown.

"Ma’am, did he put his hands on you? Or on the kid?"

Ella shakes her head. "No, he wasn't like that. He's just irresponsible and--"

_ And and and... _

He's heard it all before and it takes all his strength not to get out of the truck and beat Wayne’s ass back into the ground. He’s also not entirely sure he believes her, but he guesses that’s not for him to judge.

"Did you hurt him?" She asks and it’s his turn to shakes his head. 

No, but the night is still very young. And he is still very angry.

"Is there anywhere we can take you?" Karen moves the baby to her other shoulder. "Just for a while, just so you have some time to think and sort this out?"

Ella wipes at her eyes and bites her lip, glances between them as if she's not sure she should speak.

"It's okay."

"I… I don't really see my family because…" she nods meaningfully at the sedan. "But I have a sister near Brooklyn. I don’t know if she’ll let us stay though…”

“She’s your sister,” Karen says gently. “I don't think she'd want to see you two like this.”

“I just don’t know… after everything, if she’d--”

“If something like this happened to someone in my family, I’d help them,” Karen says. “Even if there was a lot of water under the bridge.”

Her voice catches enough to make Frank glance at her, but her face is unreadable in a way he’s not sure he’s ever seen before..

"I said such terrible things to her."

"Well maybe this is a chance to put things right," she reaches into her purse and pulls out her phone, offers it to Ella. "You wanna call? Couldn’t hurt.”

Ella lifts her head and looks at Karen for a long time.

"Yeah it could," she says, but then she nods slowly and takes the phone, and slips out of the truck so she can talk privately.

A decidedly strange silence follows, while Frank watches Karen hushing the baby, hand cupping its head as it drools onto her shoulder. 

It’s not an unpleasant moment, just extremely unusual and he knows that somewhere he should be thinking about Karen Page and a baby and why that entire concept isn’t tearing him apart but the truth is he’s finding it hard to focus; his mind running a mile a minute as the adrenalin courses through his veins making him feel like he's spiralling out of control and desperately searching for some kind of tether back to reality.

"You okay?" She asks. "You're shaking."

He looks down at his hands. She's right. He is shaking. Of course he is. 

Worse than that, his breathing is harsh and shallow and he's fighting back that red rage in his head that envelops him when his blood is up. 

"Yeah, it's just, that asshole--"

She touches his shoulder. "It's okay."

He shakes his head, puts a hand on the baby's back. It's warm and soft and he's absolutely sure Lisa had the same blanket. Absolutely sure it was passed down to Junior and that if he’d checked the goddamn linen cupboard before he blew their house up, he’d have found it. It would have probably smelled like their softener and baby powder, and he could have put his nose to it and breathed it in and...

"No it's not okay. Fucking drunk driver. Putting people at risk like that. He… he has a family and they're alive and--"

He cuts off as the words stick in his throat and pulls his trembling hands back into his lap, grits his teeth against the force of his anger.

Suddenly, he’s fighting the desire to get out of the truck and deck Wayne all over again, teach him a lesson he won't forget, but Ella is terrified enough already and despite everything he doesn't think beating her husband to a pulp on the ground would help.

Karen seems to know too and she puts her hand over his. It's not gentle. It's hard and firm and she shakes her head.

"No."

_ No _. 

No he won't. He doesn't have to make this worse, he doesn't have to fuck it all up. He doesn't have to start something that ends in blood. This night can still be salvaged. They can take Ella wherever she needs to be and then they can go and do whatever it is that they need to do.

It doesn't stop him talking though.

"He could have killed someone. Maybe her and the kid, but you too…" he swallows hard as the thought hits home - Karen Page dead because of some asshole, her body broken on the side of the road, her light snuffed out just as fast as Maria's.

He takes a deep, ragged breath, swallows bile again, bites down hard on his lip.

"I mean it ain't that fucking hard, or it shouldn't be. You don't drive when you can't do it responsibly… and if that doesn't stop you, having your damn family in the car should.

"I lost every goddamn thing because Billy Russo and Ray Schoonover wanted to make a quick buck. I would give anything in the world to change that, and this fucking piece of shit has it all. A wife, a kid. And he’s acting like that doesn’t _ mean _anything, like they’re expendable.

"Family is the most important thing in this world - you protect it with your life. It's all we have and we're all they have," he indicates the baby and then Ella where she stands with her back to them, ear pressed to Karen's phone. "And he doesn't care enough to look after them and assholes like that don't deserve people who love them. They don’t deserve anything. They're the goddamn scum of the earth."

Ella taps loudly on the window interrupting his train of thought, and Karen's hand slips out of his as he unlocks the door so she can slide into the back seat.

She hands Karen's phone back to her.

"You good?" He asks and Ella nods, small wan smile on her lips.

"My sister said we could work it out," her voice cracks. "We can stay as long as we need."

He looks over to Karen, but she's not looking at him.

"Okay," he says. " You need anything from the car?"

She glances over at where Wayne is still lying on the ground.

"No," she says as Karen passes the baby to her. "I have everything important right here."

He nods. Yeah, he does too. 

He tries to touch Karen's hand as she buckles up, but he misses and his fingers glide across the smooth metal of her seatbelt.

"You alright?" He asks and she nods, gives him a tight smile.

"We should get going. Who knows what else is on this road."

"Don't worry, I got us." He says. "I ain't gonna let anything bad happen to anyone, okay?"

"Okay."

Outside the snow starts to fall again, but the flakes are thick and dirty and for a second he thinks they look like ash.

~~~

_Sleep has never been easy for her - not since that cold night in Fagan Corners when Kevin's world ended and hers fell apart. She's always been plagued by nightmares that don't fade fast enough when she opens her eyes to the new day.  
_

_It only got worse after she put seven bullets in James Wesley's chest, although the guilt from that is little more than a memory and she's not seeking any kind of absolution from it anymore. Besides, she doubts even the kindest, most understanding of priests would forgive her a sin she isn’t sorry for._

_Except maybe the one asleep next to her. The one who also struggles with nightmares, whose back is almost broken by his guilt._

_And yet he's sleeping peacefully and the truth is so is she; even this brief waking moment wasn't brought on by nightmares but rather by the presence of Nicodemus and his insistence at being allowed under the covers, where he is now purring loudly._

_She lies back down in Frank's arms and in his sleep he pulls her close and buries his face in her hair._

You can sleep now my warrior priest,_ she thinks. _We both can.

~~~

They leave Wayne to sleep it off in the sedan, but Frank keeps the keys and disconnects the spark plugs on the off chance he knows how to hotwire a car.

The chances of that are negligible but better safe than sorry, although he finds it hard to care if Wayne decided to drive himself into another tree… except of course he'd probably end up killing some innocent pedestrian and come out without a scratch on him.

Assholes like that always seem to have the freakishly good luck.

Either way, they leave him be in the car and drive back to New York in slightly strained silence, punctuated only by the baby's gurgling and the occasional sob from Ella, which they both choose to ignore. 

He stops shaking after a few miles, the adrenalin ebbing out of him in slow wave.

Karen doesn't take her eyes off the road ahead and he finds himself wanting to reassure her that Wayne was nothing but a wildcard and they're all fine now, but he doesn't want to speak in front of Ella and upset her any more than she already is, so he stays quiet.

After all, he and Karen have all the time in the world to go over this if that's what she wants. They'll drop Ella off, go back to her place, pour a glass of wine, sit on the couch and then they'll talk and talk and talk. He doesn't care if it takes all night.

He said he'd keep her safe and he will, and it doesn't matter if that's from hasbeen mobsters, suicide bombers or the occasional inebriated driver. It doesn’t matter if that’s from herself and whatever demons she has.

He brushes her hand but she doesn't react and as they drive under a streetlight, her eyes look almost glassy.

Ella directs them to a block of brownstone maisonettes with cheerful lighting and big windows, which if he's honest, he wasn't expecting at all. She seems to realise this too and she sighs as he stops the truck outside. 

"I was the rebellious one," she says wryly. "While my sister was studying medicine I was off with Wayne and his flashy bike and his stupid friends." She shrugs. "And look where that got me."

"We all make mistakes. Only question is what you want to do now."

"May be too late for that."

He turns to Karen. This would be the moment she would ordinarily step in, give some scathing wisdom about change and hope and doing what's right, but she doesn't say anything, leaving him to sputter through some empty platitude about how it's never too late and how Ella has people who love her and support her.

He's not very good at it and Ella gives him a sad smile and then touches his shoulder. 

"Thank you both." She bites her lip and the tears sparkle in her eyes again. "I really mean it. He could have killed us. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't been there."

He pats her hand.

"You're welcome."

_ You deserve better. _

"Stay safe," Karen says. 

Ella glances between them, nods once as if she's finally made up her mind about something, and then she's out the truck, walking up the stairs to her sister's door, the baby clasped firmly at her breast.

She rings the bell and he waves when she glances back at them. 

They wait a few seconds and then her sister is outside, pulling her into a huge hug, tears in her eyes, as she drags them both into the house and shuts the door behind them. 

And then it's just them and the snow and the relative quiet of the New York night.

"She'll be okay," he says as he starts the engine.

"I hope so."

"She will. If she keeps that asshole out of her life, she'll be fine."

He backs out of the drive and onto the street, turns the truck around and heads back towards Hell's Kitchen, radio playing some cheesy eighties power ballad which he quite likes and he hums along to it as they go.

_"You've been hiding, never letting it show_  
_ Always trying to keep it under control_  
_ You got it down and you're well on the way to the top  
But there's something that you forgot"_

Above them, the night is bright, and despite the weather, the stars are twinkling and the moon is full and heavy in the sky. It feels like it still could be a good night. They're safe, Ella's safe, the rage has abated and his whole world feels bigger and warmer than it's felt since he woke up screaming in a hospital to find his entire life had been snuffed out.

_ It’s because of you _, he wants to tell Karen, but she’s resting her head on the window, watching the snow fall as they go, the street lights reflecting off her eyes, and turning her skin almost luminous, and he doesn’t want to disturb her. There’ll be enough time for that later.

He wonders what she’s thinking. If it’s about Ella and everything that just happened or if it’s about what happens when they get to her place, if anything is to happen at all.

They'll talk. She wants to go somewhere with him so they'll go. It doesn't matter where - she could ask him to take her to the moon and if he could find a way to get there he would. And then depending on the order of events, there are other aspects of what the night could hold to consider.

He doesn't want to assume - he won't - but he can still taste her on his tongue - sweet and heady - and he can still feel the curve of her hip against his, her hands grabbing at him, the prick of her nails on his skin. And that's not to say anything will happen, not to say he even has that expectation, but it's opened up a world of possibilities he knew existed but truly never allowed himself to consider.

It's wonderful and it's terrifying and he doesn't know which feeling is sweeter. 

On the radio, the ballad is still going strong.

_"What about love_  
_ Don't you want someone to care about you_  
_ What about love_  
_ Don't let it slip away_  
_ What about love_  
_ I only want to share it with you  
You might need it someday"_

It really is a terrible song, but regardless it lifts his spirits.

Her building comes into view, the sidewalk outside and the fire escape covered in snow. It's cloudier in this part of town and as he pulls into an open parking bay, he sees the steeple of St Jude's looming high against the clouds. 

It's been weeks since they were there, weeks that they haven't needed to find an excuse that wasn't an excuse at all to be around one another. 

"What's the date today?" he asks suddenly.

"20th," she answers. 

He snorts.

"What's so funny?"

"Just realised it was about this time last year I first saw you in that church."

She doesn't seem to find this funny at all. "That was the 28th."

"You remember the date?"

"Yeah."

She's slightly curt when she says it - not enough to make him feel like he's being scolded but enough for him to notice the change in her tone - and he has the distinct feeling that he's failed somehow, that this was important information and he should have attached more significance to it than he did, but he can't for the life of him understand why.

He switches the truck off, settles back into his seat to wait for her to say something, but she doesn't. She opens the door, lets the cold rush in and steps out into the night, boots crunching the snow underfoot.

He frowns, climbs out after her and tries to take her hand, but he misses so he follows her up to the entrance to the foyer.

"Karen, are you okay? Is something wrong?"

She stops just in front of him, close enough that he could touch her but something tells him he shouldn't. So he waits, watches as she takes a breath and squares her shoulders.

When she turns around, he's not surprised to see her eyes are wet.

For the first time in almost a year he feels cold. For the first time in almost a year he feels untethered, and all he wants is for her to reach out and ground him again.

But that's not going to happen and he knows what she’s going to say before she even opens her mouth.

"Frank, I can't do this. I'm sorry I just can't."

The cold soaks further into his blood and bones and he's suddenly acutely aware of the bullet - sharp and excruciating painful - embedded in his brain.

"Do what?" His voice is thin and choked, and deep in his bones he already has his answer.

"This," she says again. "Tonight."

He has no idea whether "tonight" is a time frame or a code for the plans they were formulating and he finds himself reeling at the fact that it may be the latter.

"What is…" he starts but she cuts him off.

"Just no. I can't…"

He frowns, pressing his lips together as his gut twists. "Can't what?"

She looks away, biting down so hard on her he wants to tell her to stop. She'll hurt herself, there'll be blood and tears and he doesn't want that - he doesn't ever want that again.

"Karen?" He touches her elbow but she shakes him off.

"Don't," she says stepping back. "Just don’t, okay?"

Okay. Okay he won’t. 

He stares at her for a few long moments. She's shaking and even though she's not actively crying her eyes are bloodshot and her jaw is trembling.

He could push this. He could refuse to let it go like he has with things in the past, make her tell him what's going on but something in the way she's wrapped her arms around herself and is cowering away from him stops him.

He takes a step back.

"Okay," he says, even though it's not okay. It's not okay at all.

She nods slowly, swallows hard.

"I just… I just need…” she says.

“Need what?”

She shakes her head, looks away.

“I’ll call you okay?”

He doesn't believe her. He doesn't believe her for one second.

"Just tell me that you're alright," he says. "I don’t care about anything else. Tell me that and I'll leave you alone."

The last thing he wants is to leave her alone and he finds himself wishing she'd give him some kind of indication that she doesn't want that either. Anything at all.

But she doesn't.

"Yes, I'm fine. Everything is fine." 

He thinks this might be the first time she's ever lied to him but before he can even formulate the words to reply she pulls the door to the foyer open and slips inside.

"Goodbye Frank," she says and then she turns around and heads up the stairs and she doesn't look back.

~~~

It feels like he stands looking at her building for a very long time before he gets back into the truck, but it can't be long at all because the same song is still playing.

_"I can't tell you what you're feeling inside_  
_ I can't sell you what you don't want to buy_  
_ Something's missing and you got to_  
_ Look back on your life  
You know something here just ain't right"_

He switches the radio off, sits with his arms hanging over the steering wheel, recounting the events of the evening and trying to pinpoint where exactly everything went wrong.

He comes up with nothing and drives home with only the memory of that last desperate kiss she pressed to his lips.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I'm going there...
> 
> And getting into really unknown territory too, because I have not seen DD3.
> 
> Thank you for all the lovely reviews, please do let me know if you enjoyed this.

He's not surprised when he doesn't hear from her the next day, but he finds that he was hoping he would anyway, and he's disappointed when his expectations are met.

It's always that final sliver of hope that kills you in the end.

He tells himself he won't bother her, that some reckless kisses and ill-advised confessions don't give him any kind of claim on her or this thing he wanted them to have - a thing it seemed she wanted too.

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. It means everything. _

And yet, he finds himself wanting to confront her, demand answers to the questions he never asked - and some that he did. He wants to push her buttons like he knows he can, be an asshole and get all up in her face, dare her to lie to him again and throw away the very thing that bound them together when this whole thing started in a hospital room a thousand years ago.

Mostly he just wants to know if he still gets any part in her life. 

He wouldn't blame her if the answer was no.

But he stays true to his word. He leaves her alone. He doesn't call. He doesn't message.

He waits. But he's never been good at waiting.

~~~

He doesn't sleep on Saturday night and Sunday is much the same, just with an extra veneer of emptiness exacerbated by his fatigue.

The snow looks more like ash than ever and the silence is deafening. The blue screen of his phone is dead and dark. 

He starts typing messages to her a hundred times if he does it once, but he doesn't send any of them. He retraces their steps from Friday night - her desperate kisses through to an equally desperate goodbye. 

Again, he tries to find the moment everything changed. He thinks of Ella and Wayne, how he'd held back despite the rage in his blood, how he'd handled the situation in the most restrained way he knew how, with no bloodshed and almost no violence. Just words.

_ Just words. _

And harsh words were far less than the situation deserved.

The day wears on. The bells of St Jude's ring for their morning service and the sun, feeble and a ghastly yellow, rises high into the sky.

The ash snow comes and goes, and the sidewalks completely skip being a pristine white and turn an ugly slushy grey that has pedestrians slipping and sliding, and he finds himself downstairs twice to help people who have fallen.

They thank him. They think he's a good man. They tell him he’s kind.

They don’t know shit.

Finally, he can't take it anymore and he sends her a message as it's starting to get dark. It's short and simple.

_ Can we talk? _

And then he waits and he waits and he waits and the sky turns to black and the snow falls down hard but no reply comes.

He eats some plastic ready meal, can't be bothered to look at the label and see what it is - it all tastes the same anyway. 

He feels like he needs a building to tear apart, a 14 pound sledgehammer to break rock and concrete, grind something into dust, but he gave that sort of thing up a long time ago and now all that's left is punishing.

And _ her _. Always her.

It's 7pm when he hears the bells of St Jude's again and his ears prick up, the hair on his arms standing up and his skin pulling into gooseflesh.

He goes to his phone and types another message.

_ I'll be at the church. _

He grabs his coat and his keys and heads out into the frigid night.

~~~

The sermon is about burdens and grace. It's about quick judgment and lack of understanding of circumstance.

The priest tells the story of the widow's offering, Mark 12: 41 - 44 in which a poor widow puts only a few coppers into the temple donations despite the massive contributions from rich men and women. Jesus' lesson for his disciples is how the poor woman has given more than any of the rich people. The deeper lesson is never judge until you've lived in someone else's shoes.

He sits in the gallery, cold and shivering.

He hears every single word.

~~~

Where is your God, Frank Castle? Where is your God?

~~~

Monday passes in much the same way, as does Tuesday. He gets by with no sleep and little sustenance, the heat in his shitty apartment is turned up as far as it'll go but somehow he doesn't get any warmer.

On Wednesday morning, after watching a weak sun try to rise through the grey sooty sky, he can't stand it anymore.

They're _ not _ like this. They've _ never _been like this. And he admits, he's taken advantage of her honesty and loyalty before, but she's never shut him out in such an overt way. Even at his worst - his ugliest - he's never done anything she's deemed unforgivable, and he can't stand the limbo anymore.

He goes to her apartment, knocks on the front door and when there’s no reply, he climbs the fire escape and peers in through the window like some kind of sick voyeur.

There's a single lamp burning, but she's not home and Nicodemus is nowhere to be seen. Neither are the roses.

He tells himself it doesn't matter. He knew he was running out of time. He knew the day would come when she realised she deserved more. _ Better _. He just would have thought she might have said something. A text, a word, a final goodbye up in that dark church gallery and her hand would slip out of his one final time.

He pulls out his phone, scrolls the unanswered messages. He stands for a few long moments and then starts typing again.

_ Are you okay? Where are you? I'm at your place and you're not and I'm starting to get worried. _

It delivers, but there's no reply forthcoming and it leaves him feeling lost and adrift and confused. He circles the block, can't see her car, so he walks to a diner, orders coffee that tastes like they made it with water from a toilet and stares at his phone until the waitress makes some sympathetic noise in the back of her throat.

"You been stood up, buddy."

Yeah, like he'd bring a lady here.

Four cups of toilet coffee in and no message and he leaves, goes back to her apartment, stares in through the window again.

She's still not home, but a different light is on and there's a stack of post on her kitchen island.

He lets out a breath. He can accept this. He can deal. Either she's around and she's okay or someone - and it doesn’t take a lot of brain power to work out who - is looking after her place.

Either way, she’s not with him, and truthfully, he's not remotely surprised. He ran the clock and now time's up. It was always going to go that way.

He goes home and falls into bed and doesn't sleep.

~~~

There's no reply the next day, nor the one after that. He checks her apartment again and different lights are on and new unopened post is on the counter. 

A vague picture is starting to emerge even if he doesn’t know or understand the details.

He sends another message - realises what an incredible ass he was for not replying all those times before they found each other, and vows and declares he will never ever do something that careless and thoughtless ever again ... if he ever gets the chance to make it up to her. 

And that's seemingly a very big "if".

_ Just tell me you're okay, Karen, please. _

She doesn't tell him that. She doesn't tell him anything.

So that's why on Friday morning after endless nights of no sleep and a lifetime of worry, he finds himself sitting in the waiting room of _ Nelson, Murdock & Page _, staring at the three closed doors with their respective names on them and trying to stop his hands from shaking.

Foggy is the first to see him, and he stops dead in his tracks as he's escorting an old man with a briefcase the size of a small country to the door.

"Mr Castiglione," he sputters as he moves to shield him from the old man's gaze. "You didn't have an appointment."

Frank lowers his head. "Was an emergency."

Foggy glares at him but manages to keep up the farce long enough to get his client into the corridor and then he closes the door and locks it with more drama than necessary.

"What the hell are you doing here?" He hisses, cheeks turning red. "You can't just…"

"I'm looking for Karen."

Foggy's jaw snaps shut and briefly he seems entirely lost for words. But then he frowns and his voice is bitter as bile when he speaks.

"What? Why would _ you _ be looking for Karen?"

Frank never stopped to think he might be as much her secret as she is his.

"I haven't seen her and-" He glares at Foggy, hoping that’s enough to stop his questions, but apparently it’s not.

"_ Why _ would _ you _ be seeing her?" 

He frowns. He has no idea how to answer that and keep any sort of confidence, and still get the information he wants. He doesn't want to lie to Foggy - he's Karen's best friend and there's a certain amount of respect that comes with that - but, at the same time, this seems an inopportune moment to confess his deep-seated and fundamental love for her or her for him, such as it may be.

And that's when Murdock's door creaks open.

"Hello Frank."

He doesn't sound particularly surprised to see him. In fact there's a small resigned smile playing on his lips like he was expecting him.

"He's looking for Karen," Foggy's voice is accusatory and choked but Murdock just nods.

"I know, I heard," he says mildly. "Frank, you want to come into my office?"

No he doesn't. Not really. He doesn't like needing anything from Murdock. He doesn't like being the one begging.

But none of that matters. Nothing matters other than her.

He stands, doesn't give Foggy another look, and Murdock steps aside to let him in.

~~~

"Coffee?" Murdock asks and Frank shakes his head until he realises what he's doing and croaks out a 'no'.

The office is nice, stylish, with an oak desk and ergonomic chairs, some bookcases lining the walls. It's not ostentatious, but the furniture is well chosen, simple and classy. Frank guesses if he were coming in here looking for a lawyer who knew what he was doing for a decent price, he'd feel confident he’d found the right one. There's a fine line between getting what you pay for and being ripped off and more often than not, the line is crossed. But not here. He wonders how much Karen had to do with that.

"Please, sit," Murdock indicates a chair and wearily Frank sinks down into it, bones creaking and cracking while Murdock seats himself behind his desk.

"Doing alright for yourself Red," he says and Murdock nods.

"We get by. Better than before. Foggy and Karen gang up on me and remind me we are running a business and not a charity. Keeps me out of trouble."

"Still cleaning up the city?"

Red smiles. "Someone's got to do it."

Frank huffs. "Guess I don't keep it all that clean."

"Depends on your definition of ‘clean’. What is it you said? When you put them down, they stay down?"

"Yeah, I did say that."

"I like to think I'm keeping it clean without getting my hands dirty."

"Someone's got to get their hands dirty, Red." He says glancing out of the window at the falling snow. "That's just the way it is."

"Unfortunately I think you might be right…" 

Murdock cocks his head then, puts his hands on the desk in front of him and his smile fades. He regards Frank for what feels like a very long time and Frank wonders exactly what kind of information he’s giving up to Murdock’s bloodhound senses. 

Just as he’s about to speak, Murdock beats him to it.

"So I'm assuming you're not here to check out the new place or because you missed me. Giving Foggy heart failure probably wasn’t the top of your list either."

Frank sighs, looks Murdock up and down and then shrugs. It's the best chance he has, may as well give it a try even if it feels all kinds of wrong talking to Murdock about this.

"Look Red, Karen and I… well, we ran into one another a few months back and I’ve been checking in on her and--”

Murdock holds up his hand. 

“I’m going to stop you there,” he says. “I know, okay? She didn’t tell me, but she didn’t have to. It was obvious.”

Yeah, yeah of course Murdock fucking knows. It’s fucking Murdock after all. Probably smelled him on her coat or her hair, heard his truck from 15 miles away on the days he fetched her after work. 

Sometimes he wonders if Murdock has any idea how creepy his abilities can be.

Still, it’s oddly freeing not to have to beat around the bush anymore.

“Okay,” he says nodding. “Okay, then. I’m gonna be straight with you, man to man, yeah?”

“Wouldn’t want it any other way.” 

It’s a phrase that has the ability to sound mocking - denigrating - in the right context, but when Murdock says it, he’s calm and sincere.

“I'm looking for Karen. I ain’t heard from her since last Friday. Something happened and I don’t know what, but she's not at her apartment and she's not answering my messages,” he bites down hard on hip lip and takes a deep ragged breath. “Look, I’m not here to make any trouble for her. I just want to talk to her and make sure she’s okay."

His words seem to sound far more rushed than he'd hoped but he doesn’t care. Murdock _ knows _, and if Murdock ever felt one iota of what he feels for Karen, he would understand why Frank is going out of his mind and that his whole body feels like it’s being torn apart. 

It’s just one of those fundamental things, although his track record of identifying fundamental things has been a bit off lately.

Murdock, for his part, is quiet. He has a strange expression on his face, which Frank can't quite interpret. He's frowning but his mouth isn't grim and his jaw isn't set. He looks halfway between resigned and satisfied and watching him is almost more unsettling than knowing he can probably tell the last time one ate or hugged or fell in love.

Murdock always was a bit of a wildcard.

But then the expression disappears and he purses his lips, and for a second Frank is utterly convinced he is going to be sent packing. Frank wouldn't blame him - if some vigilante with more issues than sense was asking him where Karen was, there isn't a threat on Earth that could drag it out of him. 

Still, he knows it’s his only chance. He’s not too proud to admit it.

“Help me,” he chokes. “Please”

_ Please... _

When Murdock speaks his voice is soft but he still can’t disguise how ragged it is around the edges. "If I tell you where she is you've got to make me a promise."

"Anything," the word is out so fast, he's almost shocked at himself.

Murdock grimaces and Frank thinks that maybe he was hoping for a debate, a little back and forth that might get him out of this decision he seems to have just made, but he seems to make peace with Frank’s response quickly enough.

"When I first met Karen, she was handcuffed to a table in an interrogation room. She was lost and alone and she had no one … and I thought it was my job to protect her. And I did, as Daredevil, as Matthew Murdock - any way I could.

“Since then, I can’t tell you how many times she has told me it isn’t my job to keep her safe and she can look after herself. I always wondered why she never had the same reaction to you, but I think I know now.”

“Look Red--”

“No, let me finish,” Murdock shakes his head. “It was because you saw something in her that I didn’t. You didn’t see a victim, you saw a survivor. You didn’t make the mistake I did.

“She loves you. I don't know why and I don't know how, but she does.” It seems to take great effort to say it and his voice trembles a bit. “She’s smarter than all of us put together and as I’ve been told, she’s not mine to protect, so that means I accept this or I lose whatever it is I have with her now.”

Frank feels a wave of sympathy for him. Karen Page's love is a gift. And losing it is a fate he wouldn't wish on anyone. He's absolutely honest when he thinks that he hopes Murdock finds some peace with someone else one day.

"You don't have to--" he starts but Red holds up his hand again and he bites back his words.

"What you need to understand is that you are the only one who believed in her ability to look after herself, who saw that underneath everything she was tougher and harder and more capable than any of us. And that means that your opinion of her is vastly more important to her than pretty much anyone else’s. Because in her head, you see who she is, the real her,” Murdock sighs deeply. “So when you find her, when you _ know _, I want you to remember you could never punish her as much as she's punished herself."

It's Frank's turn to frown and white hot anger flares just under his skin.

"Punish her?” He stands up, almost knocking the chair over. “Christ, Murdock, is that what you really think of me?"

"No, no," Murdock says placatingly. "I didn't mean it like that."

"Well then you might want to say what you mean. I know we don't agree on pretty much any damn thing but _ goddamnit _ Red, I thought you knew me better than that." 

Murdock is nonplussed by his outburst.

"I know you won’t hurt her like that. Do you really think I'd be here entertaining this if I did?" He sighs and sits back in his chair, seems to be searching for the right thing to say and not finding it. "I still love her, and I still want to protect her - you don’t just lose that because she tells you to, but I don’t get a say in that. The heart wants what the heart wants and she wants you. You got under her skin and the saddest thing is I don’t think _ you _even know why.”

“What are you talking about, Red?”

“Why do you think she spent so much time trying to save you? Why do you think she willingly went along with all your bullshit? What do you think she was looking for when she agreed to help you with anything you asked, even if it put her in danger or on the wrong side of the law?”

“Christ, I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “You think I ain’t asked myself that same question a thousand times? You think I ain’t asked _ her _?”

“We’re all looking for a place to belong Frank, we’re all looking for a little bit of mercy.”

Frank rolls his eyes. “Jesus fucking Christ. You are full of shit.”

“And you’re more blind than I ever was,” For the first time Murdock’s voice sounds strained and clipped, angry. “She thinks that if you can be saved, redeemed, forgiven - call it whatever you want - then so can she.”

It takes him a second to grasp Murdock’s words fully, and even when he has, they still don’t make any sense. He shakes his head as if trying to clear the cobwebs, wonders if his lack of sleep has him slower and stupider than he thought.

He glances at the snow outside, remembers how it melted on her cheeks like tears, remembers how warm her lips were and the taste of her tongue.

Deep breath, heavy swallow. He thinks if Murdock had drop kicked him he would be less confused.

"Come on Red," he says slowly. "She is the bravest, strongest person I know. She's good right through to her core. Neither of us would be here without her. She doesn't need me to tell her that."

"That’s where you’re wrong. She thinks she does need it. She always has. So when you _ know _, if you can't give that to her, I suggest you leave her be - that’s what I meant by not punishing her."

"What is it, Red? What has she done that is so bad? What is this thing I should _ know _?"

Murdock shakes his head. "That's not my story to tell."

Frank sighs, rolls his eyes. He respects Murdock, there are times he even understands him even if he doesn't agree with him, but one thing will never change, and that's that Murdock has the uncanny ability to turn from being righteous and good into an insufferable ass. 

"Okay. Can you tell me anything? Or are you just going to sit here and be more cryptic than you already are?"

Murdock sighs and runs a hand through his hair.

"Today is the anniversary of Kevin's death."

It feels like something slips into place, although he's still not sure what the bigger picture is. 

"Yeah? Okay," he nods. "You still ain't told me where she is."

"She's at home, Frank," He says it simply, like it's obvious.

"She isn't. I checked there."

Murdock shakes his head. "Not in Hell's Kitchen. _ Home _. Fagan Corners in Vermont."

_ I want you to go somewhere with me... _

"To see her father?"

"Maybe. They don't exactly have an easy relationship, but grief brings people together in the strangest of ways. Still, I don’t think you’d be crashing any family reunions."

He stays for a second longer, digesting this information, and then he nods, and heads for the door.

"Thanks," he says. "Thank you for telling me."

Murdock nods and a muscle in his jaw twitches.

"Be good to her," he says as Frank grabs the door handle. "You can't keep breaking her heart. Of all people, I know where that leads."

God, when is it that Murdock started making sense and he stopped?

He nods and even though Murdock can't see it, he thinks he's aware anyway.

"See you around, Red."

He takes the stairs two at a time as he races to his truck.

~~~

_ She dreams of Kevin. He’s standing in a field of white rose petals, holding his hands up to the clear blue skies. _

_ She calls to him and when he turns to look at her his smile is warmer and brighter than the sun. _

~~~

_ "Tell me something that scares you." _

The one thing he knows about fear is that it never manifests how he thinks it will. The timing is always right, the details never are.

He was terrified on the plane back from the Gulf, terrified it would crash and he'd never see Maria again. That particular fear was entirely unfounded, but he still lost her the next day. When he broke out of Rikers he was terrified he wouldn't find The Blacksmith only to discover that the reality of who he really was, was worse; only to find that Karen was in danger because of him. When Lewis Wilson started blowing Hell's Kitchen apart he was terrified he'd lose Karen all over again, but he didn't and he lost Billy instead.

So he's learned to trust his gut, more than his mind; learned that he's right to fear, but not right in his assumptions about the target of that fear.

_ ("Tell me something that scares you." _

_ " _ _ I’m scared something will happen to you because of me. Because of this.”) _

He realises now that maybe he got that the wrong way around. Maybe he loses her because of _ her_.

That doesn't make the prospect any less frightening.

His knuckles turn white as he grips the steering wheel and despite the heater being turned up to full blast, he's still cold.

_ I'm coming, my girl. I'm being better. _

~~~

_ He’s tracing the line of her hip with his fingertips when she wakes up. The early morning sun just glinting through the window. She’s warm and sleepy and she presses her back to his belly and takes his hand, kisses his knuckles. _

_ “We don’t need to get up yet,” he whispers, voice heavy with sleep. “We don’t need to do anything.” _

_ “Hold on with both hands,” she says. _

_ He kisses her shoulder and drags her close, “And never let go.” _

~~~

_ Fagan Corners… _

The town is exactly what he expected. A sad, grey town with sad grey people and little to make the days pass any faster.

The cold here is bitter, worse than Hell's Kitchen. The snow is heavy and dirty, already backed up on the sidewalks and he passes dozens of people digging out their driveways.

Strangely though, despite the cold there's smoke in the distance, clouding the early afternoon sunlight, and three fire trucks drive past him - sirens blaring - as he heads up the main street.

And, as expected, that is just as sad and bleak as everything else. There's a few betting shops and off licenses, a doggy grooming parlour and a diner with weathered, unreadable signage, its windows boarded up. It doesn't look like it's been opened in at least a decade.

To the left there's a bar called _ Big Tony's _ \- red neon sign saying “Big To” blinking sadly against the dull sky - and a surprisingly popular laundromat next door. A placard stuck to the side of a traffic light tells him there’s a motel just around the corner or a B&B a little further on, so he takes a right and heads up the road, past more driveway shovellers and a gas station.

He turns left into the empty motel parking lot and wonders if he’s just wasting his time looking for Karen in a place like this. But he’s come this far, and if there’s even a chance he’ll find her, he’ll see it through.

The gravel crunches under his feet as he gets out of the truck and heads to the reception to get out of the dirty snow and smoke.

The establishment itself seems okay, a little seedy and a little cheap but there's no signage declaring they rent rooms by the hour and the carpet in the foyer looks recently vacuumed, if a horrible mustard colour, but Frank has to wonder if that's the fault of the halogen lights.

The clerk is middle-aged and overweight, sporting a neckbeard and a backwards peaked cap. His name tag says his name is Jim. Even though he’s behind a glass panel Frank can still smell sweat and cheap wine coming off him in waves.

"I help you?" He asks in such a way that doesn't sound like he wants to help at all.

"I'm looking for a woman," Frank says.

Jim grimaces. "Ain't we all?"

Frank allows himself a small smile he doesn't feel.

"She may have checked in some time this week."

"You know that information about our patrons is classified." Jim has a shit-eating grin on his face and Frank holds back the desire to punch it off.

"Come on, man," he says conversationally. "She tall, long blonde hair, blue eyes. Killer smile."

_ Prettiest girl I ever saw. _

"Oh buddy," Jim lets out a belly laugh. "We're all looking for one of those. You ain't special."

"So you ain't seen anyone like that?"

"Well maybe if you had a picture…"

Frank rolls his eyes. Yes, of course. Of course he needs a picture.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket, scrolls until he finds one Curtis took of him of her at Dinah's Halloween party in that black satin dress and holds it up for Jim to leer at.

His reaction is predictable.

"Woah-oh-oh there cowboy. Mighta kept her for myself if she came this way." He licks his lips. "She’s pretty damn tasty."

Frank's starting to think if he leaves Vermont without a warrant issued for him, it'll be a miracle.

He grits his teeth, forces another smile onto his face, tries to sound casual. "So you ain't seen her?"

"Told you, even if I had, that information is confidential. This is a law-abiding establishment."

Frank rolls his eyes. He doubts Karen is here anyway and he’s still got the B&B to try. He can always come back later and look for her car. 

"Okay, well if you see her, you tell her Pete was looking for her. She can give me a call."

"Sure thing buddy if you think a lady like that's gonna be giving a guy like you the time of day."

He's about to ask Jim how exactly he thinks he's got a picture of him and Karen on his phone if they didn't know each other, but he decides it's not worth the effort.

He turns to leave, opens the door back to outside and as the cold wind rushes in, Jim calls him.

"What's her name… if I see someone who looks like her but I'm not sure."

"Thought you said you don't get many like her around here."

"Okay," Jim holds up his hands. "Suit yourself."

Frank sighs. "Karen. Her name is Karen Page."

Jim makes a tutting sound in the back of his throat.

"Page, you say?"

He turns, eyes Jim over his shoulder. "Yeah, you know her now?"

Jim shakes his head. "No, I ain't seen her. I woulda remembered someone like her. But we got a Page here - Paul or Patrick maybe, no no, Jackson. No, it's something weird like Pacman or…" he trails off. "I dunno, must be her dad or an uncle or whatever. Maybe she's staying there with him."

"You know where _ there _ is?"

"Yeah, it's two streets up and then a left, but he ain't gonna be home now."

"Where’s he gonna be?"

Jim points down the street, dirty fingernails glinting in the bad light.

"Big Tony's. Best beer in Vermont.”

That’s a lie, but as Frank pulls out of the motel parking lot and heads back to the main street, he wonders if he’s stumbled on the first bit of truth Fagan Corners has to give him.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let's see how we go with this, considering I'm waaaaay out of my comfort zone into entirely unknown territory.
> 
> Please let me know if you like this - I can definitely say that writing it has been and continues to be an experience for me. I tend to find, rightly or wrongly, the focus of a lot of my fic is Frank and his man pain - for me, that's fine. There are many different ways to explore that and it doesn't need to involve Karen "fixing" him. I've written a number of permutations of Frank dealing and healing, with a number of different journeys that get to the conclusion of him eventually moving on and "loving someone else instead of another war", but I've only ever touched on Karen's trauma, so doing this has been a very interesting study for me.
> 
> Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

_ He gets up eventually - reluctantly - to feed Nicodemus and turn on the heat. _

_ "Stay here," he says as he brushes his lips on hers. "Keep the bed warm for me." _

_ “I don’t know if I can,” she teases. “Be cold in here without you.” _

_ He narrows his eyes, runs his palm up her inner thigh, stopping just below where she's already hot and damp. "Yeah, I think you can. I believe in you." _

_ She grins. "That’s not very priestly." _

_ He rolls his eyes. "I'm not a priest." _

_ She glances down at her naked body, the dark bruises he's sucked into her skin, his orgasm now dry on her thighs, the scratch marks she's left on his shoulders. _

_ "No," she says. "No you're definitely not." _

_ He kisses her again, and she feels his resolve to leave weakening a little, but then he frowns, says her name and he's gone, padding naked into the kitchen, Nicodemus following him and giving him an earful as he goes. _

_ She listens to him moving around the apartment like he belongs there - the fridge opening and closing, the clang of kibble in Nicodemus’ bowl, the coffee maker grinding beans and the milk frother buzzing. _

_ Their time together like this has been so short, but she can’t imagine her life without him. _

You don’t have to,_ she thinks, _he told you that and he never lies to you.

_ She leans across his side of the bed and lifts the curtain. The snow is coming down hard, but it's pristine and white; gentle puffs of powder and dramatic graceful swirls against the windows. _

_ As it should be. _

_ In the kitchen she hears the clink of coffee mugs being placed on a tray. _

_ Everything as it should be _

~~~

The only thing heavier than the smell of alcohol in _ Big Tony's _ is the smell of sadness. It permeates everything from the eponymous Big Tony behind the bar, grimy dishrag over his shoulder, to the rough tables and the patrons in the ratty plastic seats; the watermarked, dusty glasses they’re drinking out of.

Frank swears that if he just looked hard enough through the hazy lighting, he'd be able to see it hanging grey in the air like cigarette smoke.

It all seems to converge on the man in front of him, swirling both into and out of him like he's both the source of it and its intended target, an explosion and implosion all at once.

Frank frowns. Paxton Page isn't what he expected and yet somehow after meeting him, he can't for the life of him imagine him as anything else. 

He has a sort of reliable fatherliness to him, a face that could have easily been a fixture at kids' birthday parties and fourth of July barbecues - the kind of guy who’d help you push your car when it wouldn’t start in the cold mornings or help you shovel snow out of the driveway. But it doesn’t take a genius to see that’s all firmly in the past. His face is lined and heavy, his body sagging and old before its time, weighed down by a few too many failures and hardships. 

More than that he has the demeanour of a man who is entirely overwhelmed and baffled by his own circumstances. Someone who figured if he just followed the rules and did what was expected of him, he would be home free, so when life threw him a few curveballs, he had no idea how to run with them and instead turned to a kind of perpetual victimhood.

Maybe somewhere in there, there's a little something that cuts too close to home. Frank does, after all, tell himself a lot of things.

"You gonna tell me why you're looking for my daughter?" Paxton Page asks over his beer. "What did she do?"

"She ain't done nothing--"

"That's ... a first," Paxton interrupts, but he’s nodding and even his sarcasm can't hide the relief on his face. Frank's not sure if the huge gulp of beer he takes is celebratory or fortifying.

More than likely it’s a bit of both.

"I'm just a good friend who's a little worried about her.”

"Friend eh?" Paxton gives him what he can only describe as a very fatherly once over. "You don't look like her normal type."

"What's her normal type look like?"

"Trouble."

Frank shrugs. "I’m sure she’d say I can be pretty troublesome."

Paxton barks out a dry laugh and shakes his head. 

"She always did have a way..."

Frank pushes his beer, untouched, into the middle of the table. There's lipstick on the rim of the glass and fingerprints down the side. He's also fairly sure the beer has been watered down and it wouldn't surprise him if they'd used the snow outside to do it.

Best beer in Vermont, his ass.

“Look sir, I ain’t here to make any trouble for her--”

“No, she’s pretty good at doing that for herself,” Paxton says but Frank ignores him.

“I just need to talk to her, ask her about something...”

Paxton stops drinking his beer very suddenly, puts the glass down on the table, and eyes Frank warily.

“You ain’t a cop?" He asks, voice trembling. "You don’t look like a cop and we got that business all squared away years ago. Statute of limitations would have run out by now - I’m sure of it."

“No,” he says slowly. “I ain’t a cop.”

“Good.”

Frank frowns again. Every single time he thinks he might be getting a handle on the situation, something happens and the rug is pulled out from under him.

The truth is if someone told him this morning that he’d be sitting down for a beer with Karen’s father, he’d have told them they were full of shit. Hell, he _ did _ tell Murdock he was full of shit, if possibly not for these exact reasons.

“I just want to know if you know where she is.”

Paxton shakes his head. “Well, you're on your own there. You walking in here was the first I heard of her being in town.”

He’s not exactly surprised. Murdock told him he wouldn’t be crashing any family reunions and based on what he already knew that seemed an astute an observation as any. Still, he didn't realise how much hope he had that Paxton could shed some light on her whereabouts.

_ Goddamnit Karen, where are you? Why did you run away? Why did you _ lie_? _

"You sure?" He asks unnecessarily and Paxton bobs his head.

"Ain't seen hide nor hair from her in over a decade."

The disappointment is crushing but it's only still only secondary to the stark reminder that whatever wounds this family has are deep and ugly, and seemingly as raw as the day they were first made.

He thinks about how she always avoided his gentle questioning, how she seemed so much more interested in Maria and his state of mind since he lost her. He remembers what she said to Ella that night that now seems so long ago. 

_ (If something like this happened to someone in my family, I’d help them. Even if there was a lot of water under the bridge.)_

He knew it had a deeper meaning at the time. That meaning is sitting in front of him, commiserating into watered down beer.

Still, it doesn't solve the immediate issue.

The fact is he should leave. He knows he should. He's not here to make nice with the parents or meet the family. And if Paxton doesn't know where she is, he's about as useless as Jim in the grander scheme of things, despite the familial relationship.

And yet, Frank finds himself wavering, unable to haul his ass off the sticky seat and say his goodbyes.

“So she’s not staying with you?” He presses, even though he already knows the answer.

Paxton shakes his head. “Even if she is here, she wouldn’t be. She asked a while ago if she could come home. I said no.”

“To your own daughter?”

The words are out before he can stop them and Paxton Page fixes him with a heavy, stern stare that he returns with one of his own. 

He has no obligation to impress this man, no desire to get into his good graces, and he doesn't think that even if Paxton did ever get over himself and express his displeasure to Karen at her choice of romantic partner - if, of course, he can still call himself that - it would make the slightest bit of difference to her.

But then Paxton smiles that hopeless smile again and his eyes glisten as the light catches them. "I know what you're thinking: I have a beautiful daughter and she's sweet and kind and funny. You're infatuated with her - sorry but it's obvious, ‘good friend' my ass - so how can I be such a piece of shit about her?”

“Truth is sir, I think it’s your loss.”

Deep frown. Heavy sigh.

You think it isn’t hard for me too?”

“I’m sure it is.”

"I feel for her - I do," Paxton continues. "But you have to understand, there are some things you can't take back."

There’s a certain resignation in the way he’s says this, as if he's practiced these words a thousand times and feels that somehow they're enough; he's paid his dues by acknowledging that whatever deep, dark secret this family has, has caused Karen a certain amount of suffering too.

Frank's not entirely certain what to make of that, and he’s not also sure he really wants to delve too far into it with Paxton either.

There are far more important things at stake than the justifications of an estranged father.

"I'm sorry to have bothered you but I'm not here to dig up the past," he rises out of the sticky seat. "I'm just looking for Karen, so if you can’t help me, I’m going to--."

"Why?" 

The question catches him off guard, not so much the desire for information but more the slightly disbelieving and overly wary tone with which Paxton delivers it. 

“Say what now?”

“Why do you want to find her?”

_ Want_.

Not _ need_. That feels significant.

Frank narrows his eyes, glances at the wedding ring on Paxton's hand, the slightly shabby sweater he's wearing that's clean but unravelling at the cuff and the collar.

Much like the man in front of him, he’s fairly sure if he just tugged a thread hard enough, it would come apart at the seams.

"She’s very special to me, Mr Page. I wouldn’t be stretching the truth if I said I owed her my life--”

“Why is it always so dramatic with her? Always life or death.” 

The question isn’t for him - he knows this. It’s simply the musings of a man old beyond his years, jaded by things he never thought he’d experience, and yet it stops him short. He wonders how he’d feel if some stranger were to come to him and sing Lisa’s praises, explain how she’d saved his ass more than once. Would he feel pride or would he be concerned about the choices she was making that facilitated this kind of a conversation?

He’s honestly not sure.

Still, another piece of the puzzle slips into place, another clue to the mystery that is Karen Page; Paxton Page doesn’t know his daughter, he doesn’t understand her, he doesn’t get why she does the things she does. And he could easily put that down to their estrangement - a decade is a long time and people change in unpredictable ways - but he thinks if he traced this to its source, it would stretch back a lot further than the moment it all came tumbling down.

He shakes his head. “Mr Page, I don’t know what happened here, but it doesn’t matter to me. Karen helped me in ways I didn't even think I could be helped. And now I have this feeling that she needs someone to do that for her, that she's lost and needs help."

"Karen always needs help," Paxton says wearily. "This is what she does. She gets herself into situations she can't get out of, maybe with good intentions but more often than not it's because she doesn't think about consequences, because she's selfish and when the real world catches up with her, that's when she comes asking for help."

If Paxton Page had punched him, he'd be less surprised. It feels like he's talking about an entirely different person. For a second, Frank wonders if he's got it all wrong and he's talking to the wrong Paxton Page who lives in Fagan Corners with a daughter called Karen. The chances of there being two of them seems far higher than someone who knows Karen getting everything about her so wrong.

He bites his lip. "I'm sorry, but that ain't how I know her at all."

"Of course you don't. Why would you? Her heart is kind and her intentions are good, but you know what they say about good intentions.”

“I know that Karen has the good works to back up those intentions,” Frank answers flatly.

“She’s weak and lost."

"She ain't weak. Lost maybe, but not weak."

Paxton huffs and shakes his head. 

“I’m guessing you and I won’t see eye to eye on this.” He swallows a mouthful of beer. “You ever lose someone, Pete? Someone special. Someone close?”

“Yeah,” he says slowly. “Yeah I have.”

“Now take that pain you felt, make it harder and sharper. Imagine it doesn’t just live in you, imagine it is you and then multiply that by however many billions you can count.

“You imagining that? You feeling it?”

Frank purses his lips but he doesn’t say anything and Paxton continues. 

"That is nowhere near what it feels like to lose your wife. That’s a special kind of pain. You don't get over it. You don't recover… Pray you never have to feel that… pray you never have to go through one day of knowing how empty the world can feel. No one knows how you feel, not your friends, not your family, not your kids."

Frank clenches his jaw. This, more than begging Murdock for help, is the last kind of conversation he wants to have.

"I would imagine there's a special kind of pain to losing your mother too."

Paxton gives him a sharp look, but he doesn’t contradict him.

"But losing your child… that's something else. That's a pain you carry with you forever and it doesn't ease. You wake up with it, you go to sleep with it. God, after a while you like it. It becomes like another limb…there’s a reason they say fathers shouldn’t bury their children and it’s not because they’re your legacy or the future or whatever - it’s because we can’t deal with it. We can’t take it. You’ll only understand that when you’ve been through it."

"You still have a child," Frank says. 

"No. I lost her. I lost her years ago… Kevin, well I can pinpoint the exact moment I lost my boy, that his light went out… but Karen… I'd been losing her for years before I had to let her go…" Paxton sighs and gives him a smile that he's not sure is indulgent or just plain sad. 

"I love her, of course I love her. I wanted so many things for her. She was so smart, so quick… she hated this town, you know that?"

Yeah, yeah he does. She didn't have to tell him for him to know it. He hates it too.

"Never understood it,” Paxton continues. “Not really. It's home. But she could have got out…."

"She did."

"Not like she should have. Not the right way." He pauses. "I know you don't think much of me, Pete, but I hope she's well and safe. I do. She has people like you looking out for her and that will make me sleep a little better tonight. But I don't want her in my life. Not after what she did."

Frank sucks in a deep breath. He takes a few moments to look at the ratty curtains behind their booth, the dirty window and the dirtier snow outside. He imagines Karen growing up here, a little girl with blonde pigtails in big rubber boots and a bright blue coat. He imagines the exact moment when the childhood wonder and innocence faded and she started seeing the town for the bleak, grey place that it was and still is - if it was before or after her mother died. 

Fagan Corners could have never kept her. It shouldn’t have even tried.

He diverts his attention back to the man in front of him. He still doesn’t quite know what to make of him but he also doesn’t care to spend too much time finding out.

And yet… And yet, when he tries to take a step away all he can think about is her. Her eyes and her tears. Her hands running through his hair, tending to his bruises. Her unwavering loyalty. Her goodness.

_ Be better, Frank. Be better. _

“Do you know that she likes ginger snaps?” he asks suddenly, and Paxton looks at him confused. “She likes dogs too, but she has a cat. She called him Nicodemus. Her apartment smells like vanilla and cinnamon and it’s full of books. When she wears blue it lights up her eyes. Her best friends are two lawyers and an FBI agent. She’s one of the most respected investigators in Hell’s Kitchen. She drinks lattes, but when she busy, her coffee is black and bitter. She writes like nothing you’ve ever read before.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Why indeed. Why is he even bothering?

“Sir, with all due respect, I ain't gonna change your mind and I ain't here to try and sell your relationship with your own daughter to you either. But you’ve made the same decision for more than a decade now - sitting here in this town, this room,” he glances around the bar. “Maybe it’s time to make another one. This one hasn’t got you anywhere.

“You could have a family. Or you could be here, and you could be alone--”

“You don’t know what--” Paxton starts.

“--without your friends--”

“--she did. You don’t--”

“--without a life--”

“--understand what she--”

“--or a family, your wife--”

“--you think you know all about me, but you--”

“--or your daughter, or your son--”

Paxton slams his beer down on the table. It splashes on the wood and on his sweater, a little bit of it landing on Frank’s knuckles. He’s not surprised that it’s lukewarm.

There's a few seconds when he seems to be attempting to get himself under control, hauling in deep ragged breaths, fingers clenching and unclenching, teeth gritted. 

And then he loses, and that sadness in the air turns darker than the smoke outside. Frank swears he sees it roiling like a living thing in front of him.

“I DON’T HAVE MY SON BECAUSE SHE KILLED HIM. SHE’S SELFISH AND IRRESPONSIBLE! BECAUSE SHE DOESN’T THINK!

"SHE KILLED MY BOY! SHE TOOK HIM FROM ME WITH HER BULLSHIT, AND NOTHING WILL EVER EVER BRING HIM BACK! AND NO GINGERSNAPS OR CATS OR GOOD WRITING WILL CHANGE THAT."

He slumps back down into the booth, eyes wild and hands shaking, reaching tentatively for his beer and then stopping before he does.

And then... nothing.

The silence is absolute. The world is grey monochrome. Even the smell of alcohol and despair is gone.

The words though. The _ words... _

It feels like they land in his head one by one, perfectly timed, perfectly paced like some kind of marching band of ugly truth.

And then they do it again and again and again until it feels like they're the only things that are and have ever existed since the day he asked Karen Page to stay and she did.

_ SHE KILLED MY BOY. _

_ SHE. KILLED. MY. BOY. _

_ Yes. Yes she did do that. _

He doesn't even try to pretend it could be a lie.

_ (“How are you so good?” _

_ “I’m not good. Don’t think that I am.” _

_ “You’re smart and you’re strong and you’re the bravest person I know.” _

_ “None of those are the same as good.”) _

No. No they're not. 

_ Be better. Oh god, be better. _

He thought he didn’t know how, but now he realises she was talking to herself all along.

"Everything okay over there?"

_No. Nothing is okay. Nothing ever was. _

He becomes aware of little things: a strange ringing in his ears, like he’s been exposed to gunfire; that strange disorienting quiet that’s descended on the room, trickling in and bearing down heavily on top of the sadness; the clink of glasses as they touch the table, the slow exhaling of the other patrons; and Big Tony looking over at him like he’s trying to figure out if he should step in but really doesn’t want to make the decision.

And then Paxton, and the tears on his cheeks; his wet, bright eyes and that thread on his sweater catching on an exposed splinter on the table.

Finally the sound of Frank’s own heart beating like a drum in his chest.

“She killed him." Paxton says quietly. “Fathers shouldn’t bury their children.”

No, no they shouldn’t.

Frank takes a breath, sees his trigger finger twitching like it sometimes does when he’s stressed out and anxious and then his ears pop and the white noise in his head cuts out.

He sits back down and reaches for his beer.

~~~

_ He brings them coffee and chocolate croissants, and when they’re done, she lies back with her head on his chest, hand on his heart, while he plays with her hair. _

_ "Like gold," he says as if it's some kind of revelation, but when she looks at him to ask him to explain, he's deep in thought. _

_ She lifts a leg over his and he draws in a breath that sounds both like a gasp and a sob. _

_ "I want to stay," he says. "Forever." _

_ "So stay then." _


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic has been a damned rollercoaster. As I have said before I have always tackled Frank's trauma and when I have looked at Karen in the same light, it has always been less intense, and never at the same time as dealing with Frank's man pain. And this fic just seemed to bring those two things together and say "choose one". 
> 
> So yeah, this has been interesting.
> 
> Still don't know how many chapters this will be. The end is in sight, I know that much, but Karen and Frank like to throw me curve balls before I get there.
> 
> Please let me know what you think and thank you to everyone who has been supporting my fics so far - I promise I am getting back to the others soon. I have a tonne of leave owed to me so it'll be the perfect time to catch up on everything.

Fagan Corners' one and only church is right on the northernmost point of the town, and its cemetery sprawls out for a few acres behind it before disappearing up a hill and into some trees.

It's a drive - an actual drive - to get there, not really within easy walkable distance of pretty much anything in the town. It's almost like when the church was built whoever decided on the location wanted people to make an effort to get there; Sunday best and then a trip in the car with the family before prostrating yourself before the Almighty in the hope that He hasn't abandoned you or this shitty town you've come to call home.

Frank isn't sure if Fagan Corners is the type of town you abandon. That in itself feels far too dramatic for a place like this.

Fagan Corners is simply forgotten.

The first thing he notices as he approaches is the smoke is heavier here and some of the trees on the hill look like they've been singed.

"Damn fool kids," says the caretaker as he hands Frank a map of the graves. "They do this every couple of months. They get bored and then they come up here, start a fire in the woods, don't know how to put it out and we end up with this."

He indicates the grey smoky sky.

"Don't stay too long, breathing that in," he adds. "Ain't good for you."

No, he can well believe there's not much in this town that's good for anyone.

He thanks the caretaker, parks the truck and heads down the snowy, sludgy pathways to see what's waiting for him at the end.

~~~

Kevin's grave is simple, the headstone plain marble with his name, dates and the phrase "Beloved Son" engraved into it. Frank doubts there was much money to spare on the funeral but the lack of a reference to "brother" strikes him as pointed.

But that's not the first thing he notices. It never was going to be.

Rather, it's her. Because it's always her.

She's kneeling in the snow and the mud in front of the grave, head bowed like she's praying, even though he knows she's not. If there's one thing he knows it's that despite Karen Page attending more church in the past year than she ever did in her whole life before, she hasn't prayed in a long time.

She's wearing jeans and a sweater that seems far too thin for the temperature. The sweater might once have been blue, but it, like the rest of her, is covered in snow and ash, making her look grey and lifeless - dead - like the rest of Fagan Corners.

For a second there's something almost apocalyptic about it, death on death on death. Grey people on grey stones on grey snow.

She's not dead though. He won't allow it.

"Karen?" His voice is thin and strained, choked by the smoke or choked by what he knows. He doesn't care to find out which. 

She doesn't seem surprised that he's there. There's no stiffening of the shoulders or tensing of the hands. She doesn't whip around to face him. If anything she almost seems disappointed, like this is some kind of deserved indignity, a final nail in the proverbial coffin.

He watches as she takes a breath, lets it out to dance with the rest of the smoke.

"You shouldn't be here," she says.

"Doesn't matter about shoulds or shouldn'ts. I'm here."

She bobs her head as if she expected this and her hair slaps stiffly against her shoulders.

When she turns to look at him, her eyes are red and glittering and he wonders if they are the only flash of colour in the entire town. He wouldn't be surprised. This town has nothing in it but sadness and blood.

She glances back at the headstone.

"I did this," she says and her voice breaks. "I killed him."

"I know."

She shakes her head, tears streaming down her face. "No, you don't."

"I do."

"He deserved a way out of this place. Not me,” she swallows hard. "_ He _ was good, he was so good and so innocent, and I killed him."

She turns away, body going rigid as the grief seem to almost paralyze her and then she doubles over as her sobs become louder and heavier and the tears leave long wet streaks on her cheeks.

He doesn't think - doesn't wonder. He sinks to his knees behind her and pulls her into his arms - her skin is colder than the air - and he wraps his coat around them both as she fights against him, hands beating at his chest, legs kicking uselessly in the snow.

"I know," he whispers as he covers her head with his hand, swinging his leg awkwardly over hers to pin her down, and then twisting their fingers together to stop the blows. "I know it all."

~~~

He's not sure how long they stay like that - she fights him for what seems like a very long time - but then he thinks any amount of time Karen Page spends fighting him is an eternity - and when she eventually stops, either spent or simply regrouping, and he looks down at his jeans and coat, they're also sodden and grey from the falling ash.

He thinks briefly that the two of them must look like one of the more ornate statues in the graveyard, toppled over and lying in pieces on the ground.

He guesses that's how they both feel anyway. 

Somewhere he hears himself hushing her and he's vaguely aware that he's rocking her but her sobs are still heavy against his chest.

"It's alright," he tells her. "It's alright."

She tries to push him away again but he shifts so that his leg is tighter over hers and he has a better grip on her wrists, dragging her close and holding her still.

"Let me go," she begs, but there's no force behind it. "Let me go, please."

He shakes his head, buries his face in her shoulder, the icy skin of her neck. "I'm not letting you go. I'm _ never _ letting you go."

_ Not until the day I die. _

She's so cold and he's not sure if he can ever warm her again. He tightens his arms around her, presses his lips to her hair. She smells of smoke and dirt and she's trembling like a leaf against him.

She sobs again, a terrible sound that seems to start in her bones and crack them to get out into the world. 

"I've got you," he says. "And it's alright."

"No it's not."

He kisses her forehead. "Then it's not. But I've still got you and that's just the way things are gonna be from now on. Forever.”

“You can’t say that.”

"I can. Forever… till kingdom come."

She erupts into heavy sobs again, shaking her head, whispering _ no no no no _ over and over again, and he waits it out, letting her fight him, and letting her lose.

He stares out at the cemetery, at the blackened woods beyond, behind him at the crude little church and its steeple, the steel cross dull and weathered. God, it's so ugly here in this godforsaken corner of the world. It's the ugliest thing he's ever seen: the grey snow and ash falling to the ground - swirling in horrific little cyclones burying them both deeper in the cold - the empty headstone, the sad old men in sad old bars stinking of despair.

She doesn't belong. Something like her never could belong here. It feels like an affront to nature that someone even tried to make her stay.

He wants to lift her, take her to the truck, get her somewhere warm and safe and far, far away, but he knows he needs to be patient, he needs to let this play out one way or another. She needs to set the pace. She always did. He sees that now. Even when he was spiralling, all caught up in his own grief, confessing his love and walking away, turning hers away when she did the same, she was the one making the decisions, pushing them forward and pulling them back. Testing them and testing him - testing herself.

He failed then. He won't fail again.

"You have to let me go."

"No I don't."

_ I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. _

_ I'm never letting you go again. _

"You have to." Her voice is faint, desperate, and he shakes his head.

No, he doesn't. He could never forgive himself if he did.

He rocks her again, kisses her forehead, her temple, the corner of her lips. Her tears are salt on his tongue. He tugs her in closer, pulls her hands between their bodies to warm them up. She's shivering and in a way that's good - it means she's not fallen prey to hypothermia yet, but her clothes are cold and wet and he doesn't know how long he has before things go downhill.

Still, harsh decisions and demands won't help now. He needs to ease her out of this slowly, the same way she's eased him out of his own melancholy for years now.

She's always been better at it than him though. Subtle. Soft. Fixing things without letting on that she's doing anything at all.

All he can do is try.

Gentle kisses on her hair, her face. "How long have you been out here? Without a coat? Or gloves?

"You're smarter than all of us put together and yet you come here and do this… even Red insulates his damn suit. Foggy would have probably brought his own central heating and a freezer suit, one of those duvet coats, and David - Jesus Christ - he’d have brought his own sauna or something."

He's talking nonsense, using the same low voice he'd use with frightened animals, but somehow it feels important that he keeps it up, that she hears his voice, soft and warm as he can make it.

"Did you walk all the way here? I didn't see your car. Walking in weather like this…"

She whimpers again and he rocks her.

"You know when your parents said they walked 10 miles through the snow with no shoes to get to school every day, they were lying."

Somewhere between the sobs, he swears he hears a faint watery snort and he smiles wanly.

"It just ain't true, my girl. They all tell the same fucking stupid story. Mine did. Maria's did. They all did it. Got it from some bullshit parenting 101 course for boomers. Or maybe it's just something you have to say to get your parent badge. Maybe one day I'd have just told Lisa and Frankie the same thing because otherwise you can't legally call yourself a parent anymore. But it's all lies.

"You didn't need to do it just because they said they did."

_ You don't need to do the same thing your parents do. _

Another flurry of snow kicks up next to them and the wind howls, sending cold shards of ice against his face. He lowers his head, squeezes her tight.

"And this," he says touching the rough material of her top. "When they said they only had one sweater and it wasn't warm and made out of a Hessian bag, that was also a lie. 

"You don't need to make yourself cold and uncomfortable, just because they think it's character building."

_ You don't need to punish yourself. _

Her hands flutter tentatively between them, like she wants to touch him but isn't sure how, or worse, if she even should.

He tries not to let that break his heart, but he fails, and his tears freeze on his cheeks.

"It's okay, my girl."

Please dear God, don't let that be a lie.

In his arms, she draws a ragged breath and he knows what she's about to say is important and likely to tear them both apart.

"I killed him," she whispers, like it's a secret. "I did that.

"People like me don't deserve love. We don't deserve anything."

He closes his eyes, lets the words sink into his bones, waits for the rush of horror and shame that comes with them and forces it aside.

"Shh, that ain't true. _ I _ love you. I love you more than anything."

_ I love you. I love you. I love you _.

Like before when the words lingered in the gunsmoke and the sadness, these hang in the ash.

They're nothing but ugly truth.

"You shouldn't. Not after what I did."

He kisses her hair again, pulls back a little so he can see her face.

"Look at me," he says.

He takes her hands, places them firmly under his sweater on his belly. They're like ice but he doesn't care, and then he reaches up and cups her face, stares right into her eyes. They're still the prettiest eyes he's ever seen.

Thumb over her cheekbones, forehead pressed on hers. "I don't care. It doesn't matter. It doesn't change how I feel about you."

_ Nothing would change how I feel about you _.

Her breath hitches in her throat and she buries her head in his chest and sobs until she has no more tears left to cry.

~~~

She doesn't object when he lifts her and carries her out of the graveyard. She's still crying but she's mostly spent and her sobs are silent.

He gets her into the truck, bundled in his coat, turns the heat up as far as it'll go and leaves Fagan Corners' dead behind them, where they belong.

He wonders if somehow him and Karen can belong somewhere too.

There is still much to be discussed. Much to be done. But he's not worried about that now. Right now all he's worried about is getting her warm and safe. Right now he's worried about being there for her. 

Being better.

She shivers the whole way, head in her hands, his coat not providing much protection against her sodden clothes. He still worries about hypothermia, even though she doesn't have the signs for it. He doesn't trust Fagan Corners not to try and give her one last fatal punishment. 

By the time they reach the B&B, she's drawing in ragged, hitching breaths that sound dangerously close to full fledged panic. He suspects this might continue for a while. As he knows, there's really no such thing as grief and healing that goes in a straight line. 

The fact is it’s all a spiral.

The B&B itself, is nicer than the motel, the owners at least having some sense of the tourism industry, but even its cheerful looking reception and wrought iron awnings can't hide the bleakness of the town, all it can do is temper it for a very limited amount of time. 

He should have checked here first, he realises. He could have avoided Jim and Paxton and all the shit in between, but he knows deep in his bones that this was the only way things could have happened. It was the only chance they had, if they have one at all.

When he comes around to her side of the truck to pick her up again, she tells him between chattering teeth that she's sorry and he shouldn't have to do this.

"Yeah I do." he says.

"Frank, I…"

"Let me do the heavy lifting," he says. "Let me take care of you for once."

_ Let me pay my debts even though the idea of not being indebted to you is the worst thing I can imagine. _

Her eyes glitter like diamonds and the wind howls through the parking area, whipping up grey snow and tossing it around.

"Please," he whispers.

_ You don't need to be strong right now. _

She touches his face and hooks an arm around his neck.

"Okay," she says, voice barely audible. "Okay."

Somewhere deep down it feels like he's been granted a tiny piece of absolution.

He kisses her forehead and pulls her into his arms. 

_ My girl, oh my god, my sweet girl. _

~~~

_ "You never asked about this one," He points to his own heart. _

_ She studies the skin. It's smooth and unblemished and she’s touched and kissed it a hundred times and never once felt any bumps or ridges. _

_ "There's nothing there." _

_ "Yeah, there is." _

_ "Then it's faded." _

_ "No, I feel it." _

_ She shakes her head. "I can't see it." _

_ “It’s still there.” _

_ “Okay,” she says dubiously. “Then tell me about it.” _

_ He cups the back of her head and pulls her close so he can kiss her. _

_ "It's you," he whispers. "It's always been you." _

~~~

_ I love you. I love you. I love you. _

_ It means everything. It doesn't matter what you've done. _

Nothing has changed. Nothing but everything. The truth is he's not even surprised. 

The room she's rented at the B&B is unexpectedly nice and spacious for a place like Fagan Corners. There are two double beds, a breakfast nook, a small coffee station and a bathroom with a tub and a shower. He notes all these things in the shadows as he carries her inside. On any other occasion he'd feel happy - pleasantly surprised - but mostly all he feels is relief when he shuts the door behind them. It feels like he's closed a pathway to the outside world with all its snow and sadness and death, even if the respite is only temporary.

He puts her down on the bed furthest from the door. She's still shivering and shaking and even though he knows objectively it's the fact that she's been out in the snow for hours, with nothing but a sweater and a desire for punishment, he also knows about the cold that settles into your bones like a sickness, the cold you never seem to be able to cut out for yourself, the cold that only someone who loves you can excise.

She loved him enough for that, he hopes she believes the same of him.

Down on his knees on the floor in front of her, one hand on the rough, wet material of her jeans, the other cupping her cheek and tilting her face to look at him, thumb swiping at a tear.

"Karen," he says. "I need to get you warm. These clothes..."

He wants to ask if she trusts him, but the truth is the answer is irrelevant.

She bites her bottom lip, looks away and he thinks she'll start crying all over again and he'll need to force this decision on her, but then she takes a breath and nods once, short and sharp.

"D-do what you have t-to do."

He stares at her a moment longer and then he bows his head like he's about to pray, wonders briefly at the fact that redemption and sin have now become one and the same, and gets to work.

He strips her. Boots, socks, jeans, sweater all in a dirty, wet heap on the floor. 

And it's easy. It's not even a thing.

When he unsnaps the clasp of her bra, she acts like it's nothing as it glides down her arms and it goes much the same for her panties and he slides them over her hips and down her legs.

He allows himself a split second to get over the fact that he's here with her and they're alone and she's naked as the day she was born, and then he takes a breath and looks up at her - her dirty, tear streaked face, red eyes, shaking shoulders, quivering pale flesh.

She doesn't even try to cover herself.

"Gu… guess this was… wasn't how you imag-g-gined it," she stutters and he shakes his head.

"Not imagining anything."

It's the truth. There's time for that later… or there's not. Right now it's entirely inconsequential.

Still, he doesn't trust himself to say much more. His voice is already husky and choked and he's trying very hard not to consider the implications of this too closely. 

He doesn’t want to spiral yet. He knows if he starts he’ll never stop.

He takes a blanket from the spare bed and wraps it tightly around her middle, pulls it over her knees.

"Lie back," he says gently and when she does he pulls the comforter over her as well and tucks her in.

And then there’s nothing. Nothing more he can do. Nothing more he can really say. He’s found her and she’s safe and that’s the only thing that matters - the only thing that’s ever mattered since the day he met her.

He sits down on the side of the bed, strokes her hair, forces his thoughts away from everything that could have happened or could have gone wrong. Fagan Corners can keep its nightmares for now. 

"You'll be okay soon," he says. "Best to warm up the body before the extremities."

She nods and reaches out tentatively to take his hand. He squeezes it, brings her cold fingers to his lips and kisses them.

"W- what about you?" She whispers.

"What about me?"

"You've … you've also b-been out in the c-cold."

"I'll be okay, I had a coat. I wasn't there for that long."

"Felt long."

Yeah, yeah it did. But he thinks that much like the cold he's been feeling since the day his life went up in a hail of bullets, Karen's been freezing for years.

He traces the lines of her hand, the bumps of her knuckles, the smooth delicate skin of her wrist. Somewhere deep inside, he allows himself to acknowledge the flare of desire for her, the heat building in his belly, the yearning to touch her, learn her lines, trace her curves and muscles, put his mouth on her. But there are so many more important things that need to be done now. So many things that take precedence over any kind of burning ache on his part.

He kisses her hand again and then brings his face close to hers.

"I love you," he says and the words hitch in his throat. "I love you. Nothing will change that. I need you to understand that."

She lets out a sob, looks away, but her hands tighten on his and she takes heavy gulping breaths.

"You lost your family, and I k-killed mine."

He shakes his head, hushes her. Outside a truck starts in the parking lot and its headlights shine in through the window before it disappears.

"Don't do that," he says. "Not now. You don't need to do this now. We don’t need to do this now."

"When?" She asks.

"Tomorrow, the next day, the day after that. But not now. Not like this."

_ Not when I found you and we’re both so broken up inside. Please. _

He thinks she'll press, but she doesn't. She's quiet and for the first time since he found her she seems calm… or she could just be exhausted.

"Okay."

He runs his fingers through her hair, gives her a shy smile

"Okay."

There's another long silence, punctuated only by the sounds of the cars outside, some other guests talking loudly in the hall. 

He watches the shadows grow darker, creep along the walls, drown out the light, listens to her breathe. It's not regular and deep yet, but it's still better than it was. It doesn’t hitch, it doesn’t crack. She doesn’t have to fight for it. He doesn’t want her to have to fight for anything ever again.

"Frank?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you… would you hold me … again?" she says.

It's both the best and worst thing she could ask.

"Karen, I…"

"Just tonight. Just this once. Only if you want to, only if you can...Please." 

She doesn’t have to beg. She _ never _needed to beg.

It feels like he exists outside his own body as he rises, discards his boots and socks, undoes his belt and steps out of his jeans.

She’s silent when he pulls his shirt and thermal top over his head, but her eyes glitter as she shifts backwards in the bed and he slips in beside her.

He reaches for her awkwardly around the blanket, but she tugs it out of the way and he sees a brief flash of pale skin and rosy nipples as she wraps it around him as well and then pulls the comforter right up to his chin.

“Thank you,” she whispers and the next thing he knows her head on his shoulder, legs twining with his and arms so tight around him he can barely breathe.

It doesn't matter. She can have whatever she wants.

He lowers his head, kisses her lips soft and slow and then drags her close enough so that he can feel the heat between her thighs against his abdomen, the swells of her breasts on his torso. She too, must be able to feel him, hard as a diamond and throbbing against her hip.

“Don’t thank me.”

"You don't have to promise me more than this," she says and he shakes his head.

"I already have," he kisses her cheek, her nose, the corner of her lips. "There are some things you can't take back."

There are other things he won't.

She burrows in closer, presses a tentative kiss over his heart and they don't talk for a long time after that.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a scary, scary chapter and I felt myself having to pull back a lot. I'm still not 100% sure I got it right, because Karen is private and she holds her feelings in check a lot of the time and is quite unwilling to burden others with them. Writing her finally giving over to what she is feeling in a very messy way and having Frank be the calm, stoic one was quite the challenge. Still, I feel this needed to happen and it would have been a disservice to have them wake up and pretend everything was fine.
> 
> So let's see how the long dark "night" of the soul goes.
> 
> Please leave me a comment if you enjoyed. 
> 
> Thanks again to all the wonderful people who leave reviews. I appreciate every single one.

“How did you know?” she asks. “Did Matt tell you?”

It’s the early hours of the morning, light barely breaking through the dark clouds and grey snow outside. She’s sitting on the second bed, fully clothed, blanket around her shoulders and eyes stormy.

When he’d woken up the bed was empty, the place where she slept in his arms rapidly cooling and for a second, before the fog in his head cleared, he thought he’d need to go back to the graveyard, rescue her again, bring her back, make her safe.

It was nothing quite that dramatic. She came out of the bathroom moments later, the ash and grit washed out of her hair and off her skin, and he’d hoped - naively - that she’d crawl back in beside him, kiss his face and tell him she loved him, and they could put this whole ugly thing behind them.

But deep down he knew that was just a fantasy, and a bad, unhealthy one at that. This isn’t just going to go away - it shouldn’t - and the only way out is through - the only way out is to find something you care about and maybe, if you’re really lucky, something that cares back. 

If that is the criteria, she _ is _ lucky. He is too.

He sits up in the bed, draws the comforter up to his chest and studies her. She doesn’t seem cold or angry, but she’s distant, subdued even, and he wonders if she’s feeling off balance and adrift after the previous night, maybe even a little embarrassed. She was, after all, talking like she’d accepted it would be the only time it could happen and she didn’t expect anything more.

“Karen, come back to bed. It’s cold. We can talk about it here.”

As he expected, she shakes her head, pulls the blanket tighter around her.

“Did Matt tell you?” she asks again.

He sighs deeply, looks up at the ceiling, the shadows moving across it as a bleak morning makes its way into a bleak town.

“Murdock told me where you were,” he says. “I went by your office - he seemed to be expecting me.”

She laughs humourlessly. “I told him not to tell anyone.”

“Don’t blame him,” he says. “He was looking out for you.” 

“Matt always thinks he needs to look out for me.”

He nods. She’s right. Murdock has always had delusions of being a knight in shining armour when it comes to her. He doesn’t judge though. The same could be said of him. It’s only a matter of time until she starts treating his attempts with the same amount of disdain.

“Don’t be too hard on him,” he says. “He cares about you. It’s tough letting go sometimes.”

She nods, pushes her wet hair out of her face.

“Did he tell you about Kevin as well? He tell you what I did?”

Her voice cracks a little and she can’t meet his eyes, looking down at her hands where she twists them in her lap.

He shakes his head, pushes himself up higher in the bed and swings his legs over the side, puts his feet firmly on the floor. He wants to touch her, but when he reaches out, she flinches a little and he lets his hand fall back into his lap.

“No, he said it wasn’t his story to tell,” he smiles ruefully. “Come on, this is Red, he’s noble and righteous to a fault. You know that.”

She nods again, makes a dry sound in the back of her throat. “So how did you find out? How did you know?”

Outside the wind howls and even though the room is warm, he feels gooseflesh rising on his skin.

He takes a deep breath, steels himself as best he can. “I spoke with your father. Found him at a place called _ Big Tony’s _ on the main street.”

Almost immediately the defensive exterior she’s been trying to craft crumbles. She half gasps, half sobs, hand clapping over her mouth as she looks away from him, shoulders already starting to shake. 

He should have expected this - he doesn’t know why he didn’t. Maybe it was just the laser focus on finding her and bringing her back that made him overlook the inherent problems in seeking out that part of her pain and grief... or maybe he was just telling himself it wouldn’t matter.

He tells himself a lot of things. Maybe it’s time to stop.

“Karen,” he tries to take her hand again but she pulls away. “It wasn’t like that. It’s okay.”

She shakes her head, holds up a hand to silence him. Her tears glisten in the dim light.

“No, it’s not,” her voice is cracked and choked but the force behind it makes him recoil. “_ You _ don’t get to decide what’s okay and what isn’t. Not with this.”

He starts to stand up but she’s shaking her head so vigorously that he sits down again.

“You went to my father…” she whispers as if she still can’t believe it and is trying to get used to the idea by saying it out loud. “_ You… _ of all people.”

Yes. Yes, him of all people. Frank Castle. The punisher. The man who never lies to her.

“Karen, I’m sorry. I didn’t plan it. I was worried about you, and he was the only person who might have known where you were.”

His explanation is lame - worthless even and she’s crying again, tears fast and heavy.

“_I _ wanted to tell you…” she starts and swallows heavily. “I didn’t want it to be him. The last person I wanted it to be was him. Why would you do that?”

He gets it - he does - now that he thinks about it in the same stark terms she is. He went to the source of her most painful memory, sat there and had a beer with it and discussed her, listened to the words of an old man who doesn’t have it in him to forgive her. 

It feels like a betrayal, because that’s what exactly what it is. There isn’t an explanation that fixes that. There’s nothing he can do to make it better.

He leans forward, takes her hands in his. She lets him this time but her fingers don’t twist around his and he knows if he let go, her hands would fall straight back into her lap. He doesn’t want that to happen so he brings them to his lips, kisses her knuckles and looks her straight in the eye.

“Karen, I’m sorry. The last thing I want to do is hurt you more.”

She bites her lip hard enough that he’s sure it will bleed, closes her eyes and starts to sob. 

When he moves forward to put his arms around her, she pushes him away.

“No,” she says. “Please don’t. I can’t right now.”

He sits back down, gut twisting so horribly he thinks he might throw up. There’s nothing he can do, he realises. There’s no way to fix this. There are no right answers here. Only wrong ones.

All he can do is wait it out, and he has no idea how long that will take.

~~~

He gets breakfast delivered to their room: coffee, which is better and stronger than he expected, and butter croissants; some muffins and toast, and a plate of bacon and scrambled eggs.

She doesn’t touch the food, only sits on the bed, clasping the coffee between her hands, saying little and lost in her own thoughts. He watches her from the breakfast nook, eating by himself and only tasting every third or fourth mouthful.

The truth is, he’s at a loss. While he was looking for her, his only goal was finding her and he didn’t give much thought to what came after. He knew vaguely, abstractly even, that it would be tough - there’d be some hashing it out, some calling to account where he needed to explain himself, walk his words from the night with Ella and Wayne backwards, but he never thought about it in practical terms. 

Outside the snow seems to have turned into a blizzard and people have given up even attempting to dig out their driveways while emergency services are salting the empty streets. There’s not a car in sight.

They’re stuck here for now and he has to admit that if the plan is to fix this and come to some kind of equilibrium again, a guesthouse at the end of the world with nowhere else to go is probably the best place to do it. Although an uncharitable and irrational part of him wonders if this isn’t Fagan Corners’ attempt to keep longer of her here than it already has. 

He decides, right then and there, as he’s watching the wind howl outside, that he will get them out of this town, and more importantly, he’ll get this town out of them, if it’s the last thing he ever does.

But looking at her now, hunched over and crying, he thinks it might be. She’s overwhelmed and hurt and he’s sure it feels like the whole world is falling apart.

All he can really do is be there when she wants to put it back together.

_ ~~~ _

_ In the distance, the bells of St Jude’s ring loud and long. _

_ “You wanna go?” he asks. _

_ “No, not really, but I’ll go with you if you want.” _

If you want to be a good little Catholic and atone for your sins - if you want me to atone for mine.

_ He shakes his head. _

_ “Got everything I need right here.” _

_She leans over to kiss him. “Me too.” _

~~~

“I killed him. You know that. _ He _\- my dad - he told you.”

Mid morning. Snow still falling heavily. 

Round two apparently. He knows in his bones this is going to be worse than before.

He’s showered, put on clean clothes from his overnight bag, and he’s still sitting in the breakfast nook reading a bad romance novel which was the only thing he could find in the room. He supposes he could have gone to reception and asked for something else but he hasn’t wanted to leave and he hasn’t wanted her to think there’s anywhere he’d rather be.

He puts the book down on the table and turns to her where she sits on the bed, blanket still tightly wrapped around her shoulders despite the warmth of the room. She’s been absolutely silent until now, but he sees her eyes are red, so she must have been crying.

“Yeah, I do. He did.”

“He tell you why?”

He takes a deep breath. “Yeah, he did that too.”

“You wanna hear it from me?”

_ God, I always wanted to hear it from you. Right from the moment I knew there was something to hear. _

“Only if you want to tell me.”

She gives him a watery smile. “I’d just shot my punk ass boyfriend. I was high on cocaine… Karen Page and her fucking nose candy. You know about that?”

Her tone borders on accusatory, like she’s daring him with this new information and, not for the first time today, he wonders how they went from sharing a bed, mostly naked, to this. Except he knows. He’s come to understand that last night was a time out, an exception, a few hours away from reality. Even then she wanted to know when they could talk about this and he agreed to any time she wanted. 

He has to pay his dues now. He was foolish to think they were going to be cheap.

“Yes, I know.”

She fixes him with a hard stare but when she speaks her voice is low, throaty. “How’s that make you feel, Frank Castle?”

Jesus Christ. She knows just how to get under his skin, just how to break him. She’s never used it before, never flexed her muscles this way so to speak, but it’s always been there. He’s just been lucky to escape it before.

“Sad.” he answers truthfully. “It hurts to think that things were so bad that you felt the need to do that to yourself.”

Briefly she seems at a loss, like this wasn’t the answer she was hoping for and it didn’t give her the foothold she needed. 

And that in itself is easily the worst revelation of this entire experience. Somewhere in his head, a little seed of understanding has been germinating, and he realises with a start that she’s asking him to abandon her, she _ wants _ to push him away, because anything else is too difficult to contemplate. Getting love you don’t think you deserve is one of the hardest things in the world to accept. 

He’s a fucking expert on that. And she’s a fucking expert at ignoring it.

_ (Be better. Be better) _

“World has a sick sense of humour.” she says more to herself than to him.

“How so?”

She heaves a little, and a tear rolls down her cheek and it seems to take a lot of effort to say the next words.

“You lost your family. I killed mine--”

“Stop saying that. You know it’s different. You know that.”

“Is it? You lost them because someone wanted to traffic drugs, so people like me could use them… sell them.”

It’s like someone has taken a rusty scalpel to his heart and is scraping slowly and methodically at it, pulling out ragged bloody pieces and discarding it on the floor.

It seems to be the same for her.

She doubles over, head buried in her hands, and he stands, unable to bear it any longer and walks across the room to kneel in front of her, hands on her knees.

He’s shaking too, trigger finger tapping on her leg, and he bows his head, swallows hard. When he tries to speak his voice is hoarse and he has to conjure some force from deep within his gut to kick the words out of his mouth.

“Please,” he says. “Please stop saying these things. Stop blaming yourself for everything.”

“I can’t stop just because it’s hard to hear.”

“Yeah, it’s fucking hard to hear, but it’s harder to hear you do this to yourself.” He glances at the window and the horrible snow outside and takes a breath. “I’m here damnit. I found you. I came for you, like I said I would. I told you I’m not letting you go, so stop doing this. It’s not going to work.”

She wipes at the tears on her face, looks down at his hands.

“I don’t deserve that. Not from you.”

“That ain’t true and you know it.”

She sniffs, smiles wanly. “You said it. They were your words.”

They were and he’d do anything to take them back, but there’s no way around this that’s easy, no way to turn back the clock.

“Karen? Karen look at me,” he takes her hands in his and squeezes them, shifts so that he’s closer to her, and when she tries to look away he moves with her. “Karen, you think I don’t know the difference between some middle-aged asshole who wanted to scare his wife and kid just because he could, and a traumatised teenage girl with bad judgment and no one to look after her? You think I think those two things are even remotely the same? That I’m that stupid and that bloody minded?

“Jesus Christ, I love you. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done. It’s _ never _mattered.” he squeezes her hands tighter, rains kisses down on her knuckles and tries to control the wavering in his voice. “You are good. You are the best person I know. You’re strong and you’re kind and it doesn’t matter who you were or what you did--”

“You don’t understand, Frank, You’ve never understood.”

She pulls one hand out of his grip, touches his hair where it’s grown long over his ears.

“What don’t I understand? Tell me.”

She breathes in hard, wipes her eyes again.

“It should be me in the ground instead of him--”

“No,” he shakes his head. “No. Stop--”

“People get hurt because of me, the world is a shittier place because I’m in it. It’s what I do.”

She says it with such finality, such absolute hopelessness that for a second he actually believes it, because no one could talk about something with such conviction if they weren’t wholly, indisputably correct. It feels like his bones are cracking, like the blood in his veins is turning to ice and shattering his veins and that scalpel is still busy shaving bits and pieces of his heart out of his chest.

When he looks at her, her sadness is so real, so tangible, it’s almost like all that ugly grey smoke from _ Big Tony’s _ has now converged on her and it’s choking her slowly from the inside out.

It’s only a matter of time before it chokes him too.

“Stop it. It ain’t true.”

“But it is.”

He looks away, bites his lip hard enough to taste copper in his mouth. His hands shake and his trigger finger bounces and the roaring in his head is exactly the same as it before he makes a kill.

“If anyone else was saying this about you - making you feel like this - I would kill him. I would tear them apart just for thinking it.”

She lays a gentle hand on his face. “You can’t punish this away.” 

“I know.” He takes her fingers again, squeezes them hard enough that he can feel her bones grinding on his. “But neither can you.”

She dissolves into tears again, and when he tries to hold her, she shakes her head, and he takes a step back.

“Okay,” he whispers. “It’s okay.”

She doesn’t say anything but he wonders if he’s lying to her regardless. 

Later, they get into different beds and he listens to her cry herself to sleep.

~_~~_

_ “ _ _ I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come last night,” he says. “I didn’t want to be a liar.” _

_ She kisses his nose, his cheeks, his lips. _

_ “You came for me. I came for you. That’s just the way this thing works.” _

_ He grins at her, runs a hand up her thigh and cups her between the legs. _

_ “Seems like a good way for things to work.” _

~~~

Saturday was bad. Sunday is worse.

The snow is heavier, dirty to the point of filth. When he looks outside it seems like it’s entirely ash, although he can’t see how the fires could still be burning, not with the weather or the firetrucks. He thinks if it ever stops, maybe the bigger task will be getting the town clean again. But maybe the dirt is just another feature of Fagan Corners.

He gets breakfast - same as the day before - and eats alone - same as the day before.

She sleeps for a long time and while, under normal circumstances, he’d consider this a good sign, he worries because as far as he knows, she’s never been one to indulge herself by sleeping in. 

Either way he pulls out the bad romance and starts reading again, praying for it to get better, praying for the snow to stop.

But mostly just praying for her.

~~~

Round three. Dismal late Sunday afternoon, which has been entirely indistinguishable from the rest of Sunday.

“What would you have done if it was Lisa?”

He knows exactly what she’s asking but there’s that little flare of hope that he’s misunderstood.

“How so?”

“If it was Lisa who’d done something stupid and now Junior was gone because of it.”

He wishes he was shocked by this question, wishes this was the first time this thought had ever entered his head, but it isn’t. Most of the time spent with Paxton following his outburst consisted of him turning similar questions over in his mind. He didn’t have the answer then - he doesn’t think he could have ever conceived of it - but somehow now it’s crystal clear, and for the first time since she left him in a cold bed, it feels like he has the chance to fix things.

Coffee cup on the table on top of the book, curtains drawn so that the shadows are deep and dark, and he pads over to her bed, sits down next to her and cups the back of her head.

"You need to stop torturing yourself."

"You need to tell me what you would have done."

"Okay," he says and her eyes widen.

He takes a moment to compose himself, and then looks her dead in the eye.

“I would have been angry with her. Course I would have been angry. Ain't no other way I could have been. Ain't a parent on earth who wouldn't feel the same way.

"And I don’t need to tell you how I would have been over Junior, because you already know, because you’ve fucking seen it… it destroyed me. And knowing she was the cause - knowing the person I loved more than anything - the person I was supposed to look after and protect - did that to the other person I loved more than anything and was supposed to look after and protect, wouldn’t have been something I could just move past and get over.”

She nods, tears welling in her eyes, but he continues before she can say anything.

“So yeah, it would have taken a long time, a really long time. I can't say how much, but I also know I couldn’t have let it stay like that. I know what it's like to lose your wife and your kids, so if one of them was still here with me and I had the chance to mend things I would. That ain't even a question.

"So you wanna know what I would have done? I would have taken my little girl into my arms and held her and cried with her for as long as we both needed to cry. And then when we’d done that, I would have asked her to help me figure out where it all went wrong and why I failed so badly that things could have got this broken.”

She gulps, breath hitching in her throat, hand gripping his so tight that it’s almost painful.

“What if you didn’t fail? What if it was all her?"

He shakes his head. 

“These things never happen in a vacuum. If Lisa had done this, pretending I wasn’t part of the problem would have been a goddamned lie. I’d have failed her,” he pauses, puts his hands on either side of her face. “You need to hear this, Karen. You need to hear this and understand it. No matter what you did, no matter who got hurt, your father failed you. He failed you then and he's failing you now.”

He’s not sure if she believes him, but this time he knows without a doubt that it isn’t a lie.

~~~

She launches her final attack on Monday morning.

It’s the same as the previous two days. She’s eaten almost nothing, spent more time sleeping than she should. The snow is greyer and uglier than ever. The romance novel sucks.

This time though, she comes to him, sits down at the table.

“You say you love me.”

“I do love you.”

She nods.

“I believe you. I love you too.”

She says it with such gravity that he feels his insides clench.

“Okay.”

“After all this, after everything you know, after seeing me like this for the past few days, do you still want to be with me?" She bites her lip. "You can tell me the truth. Not like you haven’t said no before.”

He guesses he deserved that. He deserves a lot of things.

“I already told you that I do, but if you need me to I’ll say it again and again for as long as it takes for you to believe it." He takes her hand. “You tell me what you need and you’ve got it.”

She bobs her head, biting her bottom lip and staring at the table.

“I need you to tell me how you square that with what you said that night we found Ella. I can’t be the exception just because you love me. That’s not fair.”

He doesn’t think it’s unfair at all but he knows he’s going to have to come up with a better explanation than that.

He takes her other hand. Despite the heat in the room, her skin is cold. He thinks about Paxton - how he was so in love with his own grief and rage that he couldn’t see anything else. It cut too close to home then and it does the same now. Since the day he met her Karen Page has been there for him, there for his rage, there for his trauma and drama. She’s taken it over and over again and hasn’t held it against him for one second. And she was so strong and so capable, that despite the fact that he knew that she too had a past, it never occurred to him that it could overwhelm her.

He thinks maybe he was blinder than Murdock could have ever been. 

“Karen, I know you. I fucking know who you are, right now in this moment. I know who you’ve been since I met you. You’re good. You might not think that you are, but you are. Yes, you did this thing. You did this terrible thing--”

“I _ killed _him. Say it. Say what it is.”

“Okay, you killed him. You fucked up. You made bad decisions that had horrible consequences. But that is something you did. It’s a terrible mistake that you made and you have to live with it. But it isn’t who you are. It’s not how anyone who knows you could see you or define you.”

“You sure about that?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“And if I’d been driving that car with Ella and the baby?”

“But you weren’t.” He sighs and sits back in his chair. “What do you want me to say, Karen? That I was wrong and DUI should be encouraged. You don’t believe that and you wouldn’t believe me if I said I did.”

“No,” she shakes her head.

“Do you want me to say I’m wrong? That I don’t get to judge? Maybe that's true. Maybe that's something I need to think about. Maybe I don't need another war."

_ Maybe this is the last one. _

“No. I don't want that."

“Then what do you want? Tell me.”

She looks away, jaw trembling. “I want you to forgive me. I want you to say you forgive me.”

Apparently she’s still not done taking a scalpel to his heart. Even worse, she’s asking for things he can’t give.

He stares at her, lost for words, listening to the sounds of the storm outside.

“I didn't think so." Her voice is soft, resigned. She too sits back, starts to pull her hands away but he grips them harder, twines their fingers together.

_Make or break Frank, make or break._

"Why me?" he asks gently. "When you told Murdock, did you ask him to forgive you?"

"Because it's you. This isn't Matt. It's Frank Castle. The Punisher. You judge. You decide."

"And I just said that maybe I shouldn't. Maybe I don't get to." He sighs, looks around the dark room, sees nothing but shadows. “If anything I should be asking you to forgive me for hurting you, for making you doubt me and us, because Jesus fucking Christ, I’ve done that enough. 

“But this… Karen, I’d do anything for you but it isn’t my place to forgive - that’s not my job here - it can’t be.”

“What is it then?”

Tears spring into his eyes. He doesn’t bother to blink them away. The answer is so obvious, so easy. He doesn’t know why neither of them saw it before.

“To love you and be there for you and help you bear this… it’s my job to--”

The change in the air is almost tangible as he speaks, the tension between them not dissipating but rather popping out of existence, the storm outside going silent.

“--help you through this every damn step of the way like you did for me. I told you I’m never letting you go. We can get better together. --”

And then she’s sliding into his lap, arms firm around his neck and head buried in his shoulder, and crying like her heart is breaking. He pulls her close, hands splayed on her back and he holds her tightly, kissing her face and whispering that he loves her now and he loves her forever, and there’s nothing in the whole world that would change that.

~~~

He’s not sure how long they stay there. When he looks out the window, it’s nighttime, and even though it’s freezing outside, she’s warm in his arms. He’s starting to realise that when it comes to her and them, time doesn’t matter.

He lifts her, moves them both to the bed and covers them with the blankets.

She’s quiet and her breathing is regular so he’s surprised when she speaks.

“I wanted to tell you, my own way. I wanted to take you home and tell you everything. And then I wanted to come here with you and show you. And I wanted you to love me anyway. Is that selfish?"

He runs his fingers through her hair, down her cheeks to her lips.

“No, it's not selfish at all. Do it now. Tell it to me your way. Let’s forget all this shit and start again. You tell me and I’ll listen.”

She does. 

If anything her version is more brutal than Paxton’s and afterwards he’s the one that’s left crying.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently these two have minds of their own and I'm just along for the ride to document it.
> 
> Thank you all so much for the support for this.
> 
> Please let me know if you're enjoying it.
> 
> The end feels so close but then again, as I said, I'm not exactly in the driving seat here.
> 
> P.S. I love this chapter, because it feels very erotic.

It's a painfully normal house on a painfully normal street: free-standing, double storey with three bedrooms and a medium-sized yard enclosed with a wooden fence - the kind of place you can get in towns like this for a song, while the same basic setup will put you and your kids in debt for years in the cities. 

It's sturdy too, if a little run down, a little shabby with paint peeling off the walls and the fence missing a few slats. But it's still four good walls and a roof and it's easy to imagine a time when it was cared for, loved and cherished by the painfully normal family living inside.

Except there’s nothing normal about the Page family.

"That was my bedroom," Karen says and he follows her gaze to a top storey window which faces east and overlooks the neighbour's garden. "And that was Kevin's."

She points to another window at the front of the house. This one has a blind shielding it from prying eyes, while hers is open and empty. He imagines her whole room is empty with no trace that she ever lived there.

“We shared a wall. When we were kids, he used to knock on it during the night if he was scared… he did that a lot after mom died…” she takes a sip of coffee out of a polystyrene cup. "Mom hated it here. So did he. So did I. We all wanted out except Dad."

She leaves the rest unsaid but it doesn't take a genius to figure out where she's going with it.

He reaches across the seat to take her hand and she weaves their fingers together and squeezes hard.

It's early - not yet 9am - and the snow is still falling grey and heavy, but the blizzard has abated long enough for them to get out of the guesthouse so she can show him the town, or as she put it "take a trip down nightmare lane”.

He wants to see it. He wants to understand - not because he doesn’t _ know _ , not because the story doesn’t make sense - but because she wants to _ show _ him, and he owes it to her to look and not flinch.

"We used to lie on my bed when I was a kid and look at the sky and think about all the things out there. The people, the adventures, the places we’d never seen.

"It's funny, even then with my whole life ahead of me, I didn't believe I'd get out. I couldn't picture how it would even be possible." She smiles sadly. "He did though. He always said he'd leave - we both would. Get out into the big wide world and show it what the Pages were made of. He was so excited, so full of life that I didn’t want to break his heart so I pretended to believe it too."

"Why didn’t you believe it?"

She takes another sip of coffee.

"This place - it gets inside you and it stays there and the harder you pull away, the more it finds ways to keep you." She scrapes her teeth along her bottom lip and frowns at him. "Guess you know all about things like that. Guess you know what it’s like to leave parts of yourself behind, even when you do get away."

He nods, brings her hand to his mouth and kisses her knuckles. She watches him and her eyes go glassy.

"What happened then?"

Briefly it looks like she won't say anything and there'll be tears and anger and he'll have to hold her again until it's over, but she swallows and when she speaks there's only the smallest tremble in her voice.

"After mom died, it felt like even imagining something else other than this place was dangerous. Like it had punished us for wanting to leave. Sometimes it felt like there was some force up there - God maybe, I don't know - saying 'you thought this was bad, let me show you how bad it can really be'." 

She chokes on her words and he rubs her shoulder.

"You don't have to--"

"I do," she says firmly. "I do."

"Okay."

She looks away from him and at the snow outside.

"It felt like Fagan Corners was the best I could do, the only thing we deserved and the only option was to grin and bear it, find ways to like it. Wanting anything else hurts too much." She stops, frowns again. “It’s strange, when mom was gone, there was one less reason to stay here, but it felt like we were more tied to this place than ever.

"Why?" He asks. 

She goes quiet then, staring at the house and biting her lip. It's early, and the chances of Paxton being home are high, and for a wild moment, he thinks she might actually get out of the truck and knock on the door, but she doesn't.

He guesses that like him, there are some things in her life that are too broken to ever mend, things that should just be left shattered on the ground. But he’s also starting to feel like maybe that’s okay. Maybe broken things that can’t be mended can be repurposed into the building blocks of something else.

Something _ better _.

"Come on," she sounds amicable enough but he doesn't miss the hint of strain in her voice. "I'll show you. Next stop: main street."

He kisses her hand again.

"Yes ma'am." He turns the truck around and they head through the snow into the town centre.

~~~

She stands in the parking lot in front of the boarded up diner, bundled in her coat, hair streaming out behind her like gold, eyes blue as sapphires.

Again he thinks she might be the only bit of colour in the whole town.

The snow is falling heavily again, whipping around them in those horrible ash cyclones, turning greyer as it hits the ground. The temperature has dropped considerably too, and it hurts to stand in the open air for too long. 

He thinks that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It’ll stop them lingering. They need to remember, not relive.

"This," she says, pointing at the faded sign. "This is what kept me here."

He puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her close.

The wind whips at his face throwing shards of ice at them, stinging his skin.

"It was ours… no, that's not right. It was his - My dad's.

"He tried to make a go of it… all he was doing was hanging onto mom. Hoping he could keep her… or that she'd find her way home." She laughs dryly. "Most people put a candle in the window, my father had to light this place up like a beacon every night…"

He can't share her disdain. He's been on a murderous rampage since Maria died - a failing diner seems tame compared to that.

"I hated this place. And I think I hated him for loving it, for not understanding why we didn’t," she says. "It sucked us dry, not just financially either, although it did that. But it felt like our souls were tied to it or something,” she stops, considers for a moment. “Sometimes it still does."

"No," he says firmly. "Your soul ain't here."

Fagan Corners doesn't get that. Nothing gets that unless she wants it to. Not Fagan Corners, not Hell’s Kitchen, not Matthew Murdock and especially not him.

She smiles, puts her arms around his waist, and it feels so good to have her do this again without any hesitation, without flinching or wariness. "I hope not."

"It ain’t,” he says again and cups the back of her head, kisses her temple. “We're putting this behind you. We’re ending this.”

She nods. “Okay, let’s go. We’ve got places to see.”

Briefly, she glances across the street at _ Big Tony’s _, but she doesn’t say anything as they head back to the truck.

~~~

“This… this is where it gets hard.” 

They’re looking at a patch of land, dotted with sad looking trailers, all buried a few feet in snow. “I shot him - Todd - right over there.”

He tries to imagine it. Nineteen year old Karen Page, eyes red, pupils blown. Her hair, usually so neat and styled is a mess, and her clothes as shabby as the home she grew up in, as shabby as the diner she tried so hard to escape. She’s holding a gun, and somehow she finds it remarkably easy to pull the trigger. 

Even then she’d do anything to protect the people she loves. 

She breaks his heart. He thinks she always has.

“I’ve got you,” he says squeezing her knee. “Forever. No turning back.”

She lets out a self-deprecating laugh. “Seems wrong to say that.”

“Why?”

“That after everything I’ve done, I get to be here with someone like you. Someone good. Someone decent. Someone who’d die for me,” she smiles ruefully. “God, how many times have you tried?”

“Karen, stop,” he whispers. “Please.”

She shakes her head. “The things I did here… they were bad things, Frank. Things that mean I don’t deserve something like this.”

She indicates his hand where it rests on her knee.

“It doesn’t matter…”

“But it does,” she wipes at her eyes. “While you were making a family with Maria, building a life, fighting for this country… I was here. I was snorting lines off dirty tables with a man who would never love me like you do, who I never loved back. People like you, like Matt, Foggy, Dinah, Curtis - you would have never wasted your time with me, I wouldn’t have wanted you to. You were all trying to fix things and make the world better and I was destroying them.”

He takes her by the shoulders. It’s warm in the truck but she’s shaking and all he wants to do is take her away - doesn’t matter where - and hold her until she forgets everything that’s ever hurt her.

“Stop it,” he whispers. 

When she looks at him, there are tears streaking her face, dripping down her chin.

“I could have never ever been a girl sitting under the tree with her friends, listening to you murder a song--

"You could have never looked at me and decided I was it, and you were done--"

Apparently she still has that rusty scalpel, and she’s still using it to flay him. 

“But you are, and I am,” he says. “Goddamnit Karen, you’re everything. You want to make up for all this, but you already have. You can’t atone for something you won’t let yourself atone for. You can’t find forgiveness in things that can’t forgive you, so stop looking for them there." He lifts his hands to her face, thumbs swiping across her cheekbones. “Stop trying to talk me out of loving you. Stop trying to reason us away. We did that. You lost. Let it go.”

Something changes then - something small - but her trembling stops and her jaw hardens. She stares him down stubbornly and grips his knees through his jeans.

“Maybe I’m a sore fucking loser.”

Despite himself he gives her a wan smile, and when she returns it, there's a sparkle in her eyes that wasn't there before.

"Well, that's something else you're going to need to get over then.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, you probably don’t know this about me but I win a lot."

She opens her mouth in mock surprise and he presses his lips to hers, tastes the salt of her tears and the bitterness of her coffee, and finally, the sweetness of her mouth underneath it all.

She really is everything.

He lingers and she does too, hand coming up to rest on his cheek, arm hooking around his neck to keep him close, and when her lips eventually leave his he kisses her forehead and cups her jaw.

“You do something for me now,” he says. “You forgive that girl. Here. Today. Right now. She made you who you are, and no matter what else she did - no matter what mistakes she made - that has to count for something.”

She takes a deep breath, closes her eyes. “I wish it were that easy.”

“I know you do, but you need to try. You need to see the good in her and remember her for that too. Can you do that? Can you try?”

She doesn’t answer for a long time. The wind picks up again and throws snow against the windows, and somewhere he sees the lights from an emergency vehicle making its way down the streets. 

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except her.

She kisses him again. She’s soft with him, lips gentle on his, but her hands are demanding and her fingers wrap around his biceps like little claws, digging into him so hard he gasps, and for the first time since they’ve been here he does start imagining all the things he’s tried so hard to push away - her slim thighs and jutting hips, her breasts with their rosy nipples and the silkiness of her skin; the small sounds she makes and his name on her tongue like honey.

When she pulls away, she’s breathing hard and her skin is flushed red.

“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I’ll do that for you. For me.”

~~~

There are no cars on this stretch of road - the snow having seen to that and chased everyone with any sense back home. It’s getting harder to see as well and he thinks they’re going to need to get inside soon. Even with the heat in the truck on, he can feel the temperature dropping and he has to keep cranking up the thermostat to keep it bearable. 

Still, another cup of joe and a warm bed - maybe a pretty girl to share it with - will have to wait. There are more important things to do right now. More important things she needs to show him.

He pulls the truck to the side of the road and she points ahead. There’s a crude cross with a wreath of frozen flowers planted up ahead on the shoulder. The cross looks like it’s been there for a very long time.

He doesn’t need to ask and she doesn’t offer up any explanation either.

She pulls his hand into her lap and they sit in silence.

They head back into town in much the same way.

~~~

_ She doesn’t take the bracelet off often - usually just to shower and sleep, and sometimes not even then. She hasn’t now and it scrapes across his skin, catching the fine hairs on his arms between the silver filigree. _

_ He stops kissing her briefly, mouth shining and wet with her saliva, and takes her hand, holds the bracelet between his thumb and forefinger and turns it around her wrist. _

_ “I’m glad you took this. Meant you were coming back.” _

_ She shakes her head, puts her hand over his heart. _

_ “This is what meant I was coming back.” _

_ He swallows hard, gives her that look like he still can’t believe she’s real and covers her hand with his. _

_ “This is why I’ll stay.” _

~~~

“Thank you for showing me. Thank you for trusting me with it. With everything.”

“I wanted to tell you for such a long time.”

“I know. I didn’t let you you. I’m sorry.”

She reaches across the table and touches his hand.

“Don’t be. Something feels like it had to happen like this.”

He nods. It’s been wrong since the beginning, wrong since the moment she lay with her head in his lap and told him that the thing that scared her could wait and it didn't make a difference. It only got worse since then with Ella and Wayne, Murdock and then finally Paxton Page. They progressed in missteps, and yet somehow they still progressed and all the wrongs finally made a right.

He doesn’t want to think on that too hard, doesn’t want to imagine what it might mean for other things, other wars.

She finishes her croissant, drains her coffee.

“Do you mind if I lie down for a while? She asks. “I’m just a bit… overwhelmed after this morning, yesterday…”

The day before that and all the days before that.

“Sure,” he says. “You rest as much as you need.”

“You gonna be okay?”

He picks up the romance novel. 

“I got…” he squints at the blurb on the back cover, “... Aurora and Dante to keep me company… well Dante at least - although he spends a lot of time staring into the middle distance. Aurora just swoons.”

She laughs and he realises how much he’s missed the sound of that. It feels like it’s been years since the last time he heard it.

“Let’s hope she finds something to keep her standing.”

He makes a dismissive gesture with his hand. “Not in this book.”

She leans towards him, takes his face in her hands and runs her fingers through his beard, kisses his lips and he feels that surge of desire again.

“Thank you for coming for me. I’m glad you did.”

He turns his face and kisses her palm.

“Always.”

She runs a hand through his hair, kisses his forehead and then retreats to the bed. Briefly he wonders if he should go with her, hold her while she falls asleep, but there’s time for that later and he turns his attention back to his coffee and the book and snow falling outside.

~~~

Later that afternoon everything changes again. 

He finishes the book. Dante rescues Aurora for what must easily be the hundredth time. It remains unsaid and possibly unnoticed to some but she rescues him right back. They live happily ever after and Frank finds himself more invested in their story than he should be.

He puts the book down, looks over to where Karen is still asleep and scratches his chin. His beard has gotten long again, almost as long as it was when he was breaking down walls on a construction site, when the whole world was empty and grey and he had nothing but his rage to keep him alive.

And then he had something else too.

_ (“Rocking the whole hipster thing.” _

_ “Been flirtin’ with the idea of going full man bun.”) _

God, he wasted so much time. So much time killing and punishing and fighting and pretending - time that he could have spent healing and loving and caring. Time he could have spent understanding so that she didn’t feel the need to do this to herself, so that she didn’t feel like it’s his job to judge her.

He could say he was sorry a thousand times and it would never ever be enough. And maybe that’s how it should be. Maybe he should never even try to get out of her debt. Maybe he likes it that way. There are worse things in the world than being indebted to Karen Page - there might not be many that are better though.

Still though, the beard. The beard needs to go before he starts looking like a ZZ Top impersonator or a Santa in training.

He sighs, goes into the bathroom and pulls off his shirt, stares into the mirror. He half expects to see a tired stranger looking back at him, someone unrecognisable with wild eyes and wilder hair, but he doesn’t. He looks normal. Calm. A little woolly maybe, a little unkempt, but the rage in his eyes is gone, the set of his jaw not so hard, and his hands aren’t twitching. And when he takes a second to evaluate how he feels inside, there’s no tight feeling in his chest, no barely bottled violence just waiting to overflow. 

He turns to the side to see his shoulder. There’s an old scar on it from shrapnel, and then another small purple bruise just above it, which must have been from her fingernails when she held him so tightly earlier today. He likes the juxtaposition; scars of war and scars of love.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which hurts more.

He combs his fingers through his beard. It’s too long to shave so he picks up the clippers, starts cutting away at it, watches as the dark hair falls into the sink, and then fills the wastepaper basket.

When he’s done he reaches for the shaving cream, lifts his head to look in the mirror again, and he’s not surprised to see her leaning in the doorway, hair messy, eyes sleepy but still sparkling. She’s wearing a pale blue tank top and matching underwear that leaves a strip of her belly exposed and he wonders how that would feel under his lips, how she would taste on his tongue.

She smiles and before she’s said a word, he knows exactly what’s coming.

“You… ah, you need a hand with that?” she asks.

It feels like every last cell in his entire body starts screaming all at once, blood hot and pumping through his veins like magma, his skin on fire. For a second he can’t breathe and his knees feel weak and he has to hold onto the sink just to stay upright.

And then all at once it passes and the way forward is crystal clear. He turns slowly and she stands up straighter, chin forward and shoulders back. She swallows heavily and he likes the way the muscles in her throat move under her skin, the heaving of her breasts beneath the thin cotton of her clothes, the curve of her hips and the smooth lines between her thighs.

_ Karen fucking Page. _

Wordlessly, he holds out the razor to her, and sits down on the side of the tub.

“Okay?” she says.

He doesn’t trust himself to speak, so he tilts his head back and exposes his throat.

~~~

He loses time. 

He’s not sure how much but it doesn’t matter. The whole world becomes the feel of her hand on his shoulder, his neck, his face, the gentle _ shick-shick _ of the razor as she runs it over his throat.

She stands close, one leg between his, the other bent, knee resting on the tub for balance. He can smell her soap and her perfume and, beneath that, the deeper more intoxicating scent of musk.

Her hands move expertly over his head and neck, featherlight touches that leave little trails of fire on his skin that ache and burn and leave him gasping.

At some point - he’s not sure when - he slides one hand over her knee, the other curling around the back of her thigh. She’s softer and smoother than he imagined, and she inhales sharply as goosebumps rise on her skin.

"Just a little more," she says, voice low and thick, and his head rolls back between his shoulders; the blade - sharp as obsidian - scraping over his Adam's apple, over the vein in his neck where he can feel his pulse fluttering like a butterfly.

He uses his fingertips to trace the line of her thigh, up from the back of her knee, almost to the curve of her ass, and then down again - slow, deliberate - and she moves the razor away from his throat as she shivers.

"Okay," she says again, more to herself than to him and he lifts his head, watches her through half-closed eyes as she twists to wash the blade off in the sink.

Her belly is taut and her nipples hard, the notches of her collarbones deeply shadowed and her lips red like rubies. He wants to taste them, drink her down and stain his mouth with her.

His hand finds her hip, presses hard through the cotton of her underwear, thumb gliding over her hipbone and then up under her top to the dip of her waist and the hard, jutting slats of her ribcage.

He tries to say her name but it just comes out as an unintelligible croak.

"Almost done," she says as she turns back to him. 

He thinks that might be the most disappointing phrase he's ever heard.

She glances down before she starts shaving him again. Her gaze is hot, piercing almost, as it lingers on his lips, travels across his torso and down to his pelvis, the heat between his legs which he’s sure his jeans are doing nothing to disguise. 

Her thumb brushes across his jaw and she leans in and presses a lingering kiss to the corner of his mouth, makes a small, wonderful sound in the back of her throat as she pulls away.

“Goodbye hipster Punisher,” she says.

She cups the back of his head, ignores his hand where it's roaming millimetres from her breast, and runs the blade over his chin.

_ Shick-shick, shick-shick. _

"You… you giving me a horseshoe moustache?" he quips in a voice far too heavy and slurred for jokes.

She bobs her head. "And a chin strap. Maybe a soul patch - I’ll see how it all looks."

"Great. Always wanted a douchebeard. Now I get them all at once."

She smiles, bites her lip as his knuckles brush the underside of her breast, and the razor glides across his skin again.

He closes his eyes, feels her breath on his face, the warmth of her body so close to his. His fingers twitch on her ribs and he slides his other hand up from her knee to the soft skin of her inner thigh where he feels damp heat in the air.

More time lost. More moments given up entirely to that _ shick-shick _ sound, the scent of skin and hair, her hands firm and gentle all at the same time as she moves his head to get at the places that are harder to reach.

And then all too soon, she’s done, fluffy towel smooth on his face as she wipes away the last of the shaving cream, trails her fingers over his cheeks and jaw, looking for any missed spots.

“How’s that?” she asks.

He can’t find the words to answer, can’t even formulate his scattered thoughts into something remotely coherent, but it doesn’t matter. 

He leans in, presses a kiss to her belly and then another. Her skin is like silk and the smell of her musk heady. Her muscles contract under his tongue and her fingers tangle in his hair, sending little sparks of pleasure across his scalp and making him groan against her.

When he pulls back, she’s breathing heavily, her lips shining and wet, and he lifts his hand from her thigh and wraps it around the back of her neck, drags her forward and covers his mouth with hers.

He doesn’t need anything else after that.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay on this. I had some bad personal news a few weeks ago and this kind of killed any motivation I had for writing. And the longer I left it, the more insurmountable it seemed.
> 
> But, unfortunately, the only way to write is to well... write. So here it is.
> 
> I don't really know if this is any good - I feel like I have lost my ability to judge my own work - but hopefully you'll enjoy some of it.
> 
> Thanks again for sticking with me. I will try and not have such a long break between updates again.

The thing about kissing her - and he thinks deep down he's always known this - is that once he starts he doesn't ever want to stop. He's honestly not even sure he can. 

They've moved from the side of the tub and he's got her pinned against the tiles of the bathroom wall, one leg between hers, a hand splayed on her hip, the other still cupping the back of her head.

And then there’s her mouth. Oh god, her mouth.

It’s soft and sweet under his, gentle but somehow still hungry - her urgency contained but simmering beneath the gentle brush of her tongue sliding across his bottom lip. 

The same can't be said of him.

He's messy to the point of being sloppy; out of practice and desperate, operating entirely on desire and need, rather than skill. But, when he tries to get himself in hand, when he tries to throw in the experience he cultivated over the years with Maria, she grabs his hips, opens her pretty mouth wider and offers more of herself to him.

More than he should have. More than he deserves, and simultaneously, nowhere near enough.

Her hands flutter over his belly, fingers tracing the lines of his hips, while little half formed words fight their way around his tongue, out of her mouth and into his chest where they hit him like bullets.

_ I love you. _

_ I love you. _

_ I love you. _

Somewhere he's speaking too.

_ I'm never letting you go. _

_ Stay. Stay with me. Please, Karen. _

_ It’s everything. You’re everything. _

He wants to tell her that again, look into her eyes when he says it and see the understanding in them, but she’s planting a line of kisses along his jaw and neck, teeth scraping hard over his pulse and making his knees buckle. Her hands drop lower, brushing him almost hesitantly through his jeans - a _ frisson _of anticipation coursing through his veins and making him breathe in hot, shallow gasps. 

"Not yet," he whispers as he heaves her into his arms, her blonde hair cascading around them like flames. "Let me have this."

"You already do." she says sliding her tongue between his teeth. "You have everything."

~~~

She's edged in silver, and he's spiralling.

They’re in the bedroom and there are candles everywhere - dozens of little tea lights - casting halos on themselves, throwing shadows onto the walls, creeping under her skin and turning her into stars.

He swings her around in his arms and she breathes into his mouth about wanting to have dinner, do something nice - _ romantic _\- like before with the picnic, and he mumbles back about how they will, how she can have anything she wants. The moon. The stars. She just has to tell him and he'll make it happen.

"Make it happen then," she asks between hungry kisses, "Make it mean something."

_ Something. Anything. Everything. _

And he's spiralling.

They're on the bed, his elbows on either side of her head and hands in her hair, her thighs splayed under him. His jeans are undone and she's lost her top - he's not sure where or if it was him or her that tugged it over her shoulders and untangled the straps from her hair. He remembers her smile as it happened though. He remembers it was radiant.

He remembers what happened after too. His fingers stuttering against her skin, sliding from the dip of her of her waist, the hard slats of her ribs, hesitating briefly, until she gripped his wrists and pulled his hands up to cover her breasts.

"Go on," she half-whispered, half-hissed. "Go on."

And he did. And it was easy. It was always going to be with her. He wonders why he ever thought it would be anything else.

Outside the blizzard rages, wind wailing in the sky and rattling at the windows so fiercely, he'd swear it wants to get in, swirl them up in grey misery and then drag them out into the cold to break them.

He guesses it can try but the truth is Fagan Corners can’t throw anything at them that matters anymore. It lost and she won and this is nothing but the death throes of a thing that is old and ugly and doesn't know it's beaten. 

This moment is for him and her, and the sweet, wonderful thing they’re doing together. He's lost in it. He thinks it won't be long before she is too. 

Her hands glide across his shoulders, down his back. She hesitates at the scars that mark him, stopping briefly to touch the most prominent ridges and dents, tracing the circles of the bullet wounds, the hard lines of blades and the jagged patterns of shrapnel. 

He’s imperfect. He’s always been imperfect - that in itself is not the issue. There’s no shame or embarrassment in it. But he’s not whole either - not in body and certainly not in mind - and even though she knows this - even though there is no way she can’t know it because she saw it even before she saw him - it’s different now. It’s different because he’s showing her, because he _ wants _ her to see, wants her to know where all the cracks are, where all the dead parts of himself are kept and preserved in all their ugliness.

The thought makes him breathe fast and hard, throat closing up a little, hands twitching on her thighs.

And then - like everything else - she makes it so that it doesn’t matter. She abandons her exploration of his body, fingers curling into the waistband of his jeans, tugging ineffectually at the fabric, as a small frustrated noise echoes out of her throat and into his.

“Come on, Frank. Come on.”

And yes, yes, he'll get to that. He will. He'll get there and everywhere else too. But for now, her mouth is wet and her breasts are soft and her skin is sweet as sugar, and he's falling more in love with her with each passing second until it stops feeling like falling and more like flying.

Spiralling. 

He wants to take her with him. He wants to show her what it's like.

Up on his knees between her legs, hand cupping her cheek - a moment to look at her, candlelight under her skin like shadows and sunlight, hair shimmering and eyes glittering like diamonds.

“Soon,” he rumbles.

_ Let me have this. _

She lets out another frustrated moan, braces herself up on her hands and follows him, lips covering his again, tongue hot and smooth in his mouth, as she tries to draw him back down. 

She almost succeeds. She almost makes him lose his focus, almost banishes him back to that spiral where he loses himself in the taste of her mouth.

_ Be better. _

He breaks away from her kisses, hand fisting in her hair and dragging her face away from his.

She's breathing heavily, skin covered in a pink flush he can see even in the dark shadows.

"What is it?" Her voice is husky and low, lips swollen and red from his kisses. 

He touches her face, thumb swiping over her cheek.

“I want this,” he says. 

_ I want you. _

She nods, covers his hand with hers.

“Anything. Anything you want. Anything you need it to be.” She hesitates, glances down their bodies, eyes flickering to the shadows between them. “Please. Please Frank.”

She doesn’t need to beg. She doesn’t even need to ask, but when she does it sends a shiver down his spine and his skin prickles.

It’s time, and he’s wanted to do this for so long.

She can have everything too.

His eyes don’t leave hers as he hooks his fingers into the lace of her underwear. She nods once - short and sharp - and then arches her hips to help him slide them down her legs where they get lost in the blankets.

And then there’s just her, starlight against the shadows, as she falls back into the dark sheets, naked as the day she was born.

His gaze travels down over the hard lines of her collarbones, the soft swells of her breasts to the indecent curve of her hips; her legs, long and slim and strong.

She’s beautiful and it hurts to look at her.

He curses under his breath - it’s crude, blasphemous even - something not very Christian, not very _ Catholic _. In another life they’re words he’d have had to confess and repent. They’d require penance. Punishment.

_ Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. _

Another curse and he sinks back down to her, rests his forehead on her belly, breathes her in. She’s sweet and heady, the air between their bodies damp and thick, and all he wants to do is lose himself in her more than he already has. 

So he does.

Lips against the soft skin of her hip, a chain of sloppy kisses across her pelvis and back again, mouth dropping lower and lower until his bottom lip brushes wet flesh. 

For a second, it’s like the whole world stops moving. Underneath him she goes absolutely still - even her breathing is shallow and quiet and outside the blizzard seems to have finally succumbed to its inevitable demise. There’s no wind, no snow, no noise. Nothing but the flickering candles and scent of her desire. Nothing but her and the silver stars under her skin and a moment stretched so long and taut, he can feel it in every cell.

And then he lowers his head, presses his lips to smooth cleft between her legs and tastes her, and the world around him shatters and disappears in one warm stroke of his tongue.

~~~

_ The bells are ringing again. No one is spared as they echo through the streets and alleys of Hell’s Kitchen, the sound forcing its way under doorways and through bolted windows, up terraces and down into the subterranean depths of New York’s underbelly. _

Come sinners. Come and kneel before the Almighty. Eat His flesh. Drink His blood. Find salvation in His embrace.

_ In her bedroom, there’s also a communion. _

_ His head is between her thighs, fingers holding her open. He's drinking her down, making guttural sounds as he swallows greedily, stopping only to catch his breath and whisper against her skin that she tastes sweet and he wants her. He wants _ more _ . _

_ She's whimpering, hands gripping his hair, twisting the curls between her fingers sharply. _

_ He groans, says her name and drags her closer to his mouth, tongue hard and firm on her clit as his fingers probe at her. _

_ She's almost there. It won't take much at all. With him it seldom does. _

_ "Jesus Christ, Frank," she says. "Jesus fucking Christ." _

_ "That good?" He asks slyly, lifting his head. “You like it?” _

_ His face is wet, her slickness shimmering like tiny crystals on his stubble. _

_ She bares her teeth, tries to think of some insult to throw at him, but none are forthcoming and it’s impossible to focus with the way he’s working his fingers between her legs. _

_ All she can manage is a low “God damn you.” _

_ He smirks. It’s almost condescending, almost patronising and she’s about to force herself to revisit her lexicon to find something a little more colourful when he presses upwards, fingers firm on that spot that makes her shiver and shake. As if by command she rises like a wave underneath him, crests for what feels like a very long time until she’s begging for him to let her go, let her have it. _

_ Let her spiral. _

_ And her does. His eyes are sharp and focused, and he holds her there in that exquisite, terrible place for one more second before he puts his mouth back on her and sends her crashing over the edge with a few hard licks. _

_ It feels like it always does - as if he’s slowly and meticulously taken her apart cell by cell and then put her back together with a flick of his wrist. It leaves her breathless and dazed; weightless and drifting through the shadows and lights. _

_ She reaches for him, tries to pull him up to kiss her, but he remains firmly where he is between her thighs. _

_ “Frank?” _

_ Before the word is even out of her mouth, he’s planting more wet kisses on her fevered flesh, using his tongue and lips on her, drawing a second - and not at all unexpected - climax out of her. _

_ She crashes again, gasping for breath, hissing his name and yanking his hair so hard he lets out a yelp of his own. He’s so good at this. So incredibly attentive like she’s a puzzle he needs to figure out over and over again, and, despite his smug grin, he’s delighted every time he does. But when he tries to put his mouth on her a third time, she pushes him away, knee connecting with the side of his head as she twists out of his grasp. _

_ “No,” she breathes. “No, please.” _

_ Not again. Not so soon. Not like this. She might well go out of her mind if he carries on like this. It’s happened before - he’s used his mouth on her until she’s nothing but a wreck of bones and quivering flesh, lost and incoherent, speaking in tongues. It felt like it took hours for her to come back down, even lying in there with his arms tight around her, his hands roaming her skin like a tether back to earth. _

_ There is a precedent set by what he can do to her and by the look on his face, he knows it too. _

_ "Please," she says. "Please now. I want you now. Like this." _

_ She indicates vaguely at his naked body, his cock hard and swollen between his legs. _

_ The truth is - _ this _ will do it too. It’s just another kind of sin. Another pleasure. _

_ He rises up above her, plants a hand on the pillow next to her head, puts the other in her hair and brushes his lips on hers, so she can taste herself on him. _

_ "You're everything," he rumbles. "God, you are everything." _

_ She isn't, but it's one of his truths and she lets him have it the same way she lets him have myriad other things he asks for. _

_ He slides inside her with a groan, presses his forehead to hers for a long moment. _

_ Not for the first time she thinks he’s something not quite human, something that exists only on the edges, the outskirts of humanity. He’s both the most beautiful and the most frightening thing she’s ever seen. _

_ And she wouldn’t have it any other way. _

_ She wraps her arms around him, pulls his head down into the hollow of her throat and kisses his temple. _

_ “I love you so much. I love you. I love you.” he says into her skin. “I’m never letting you go again. Don’t ask me to.” _

_ “I won’t,” she stutters, as she lifts her legs over his waist. “I want you to hold on. Both hands.” _

_ ~~~ _

He makes her spiral.

It doesn’t take long - she’s not hard to please like this, although that doesn’t mean he doesn’t give it his best. 

She’s smooth liquid under his mouth, flowing into him until he’s drinking her down in greedy swallows, dripping off his chin and soaking the sheets. 

And her cunt tastes like heaven.

“Jesus Christ,” she hisses. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

_ Hail Mary, full of grace. _

Maybe she thinks she needs absolution too… maybe she also doesn’t want to find it and live in purgatory with him forever. There are worse fates than that.

Below him she unfolds, hips bucking as she says his name, limbs going taut and body twisting as she rises up from the bed in a wave.

He wants to see her, wants to look at her eyes as she comes, but he also doesn’t want to stop, so he buries his face between her thighs, laps at her with firm hard strokes and sends her spiralling again.

~~~

_ He lies on top of her, spent and panting, the weight of him pushing her down into the mattress. _

_ It’s not uncomfortable. It never is with him. He knows how to hold himself, balance his body so that he doesn’t crush her or push the air out of her lungs. _

_ He’s kissing her neck. Slow, lazy kisses that start behind her ear and stop at her shoulder, and he’s still murmuring nonsense that isn’t really nonsense at all. _

Never letting you go.

Never losing you again.

I love you. I love you.

It means everything.

_ It does. Even when it didn’t feel like everything was enough. _

_ She kisses him too, planting her lips wherever she can find part of him to put them: his cheek, his neck, the hard line of his jaw and finally, when he lifts his head, his mouth. _

I love you too.

_ When he pushes himself up on his arms, she’s almost disappointed, letting out a choked sigh as he slips out of her and his orgasm trickles out between her legs. _

_ He’s never been the type to fall asleep right after, always preferring to lie in her arms, talk about silly inconsequential things that aren’t silly or inconsequential at all. Laugh. Joke. Tell her stories about his scars and listen to stories about hers. But she thinks this time might be different. _

_ She’s lost count of the number of times they’ve made love since over the past 24 hours, and they haven’t slept much either. And even before that - even before she found him, things were fraught and anxious and she doesn’t think sleep has been a welcoming companion since Fagan Corners. _

_ And yet… and yet, she’s wrong. Apparently sleep isn’t first and foremost in his mind just yet. _

_ He turns onto his side and props his head up on his hand. _

_ She leans over, kisses him deeply, and just as she’s about to snuggle into him, rest her head on his chest and listen to his heartbeat, he pushes her down onto her back, and runs his knuckles featherlight down her ribs and waist and over the curve of her hip. _

_ “Frank…” she starts, but he kisses her cheek and the corner of her lips, ghosts his fingers over her skin again so that it prickles and she shivers. _

_ “Come on,” he breathes, taking her hand and putting it between her legs where she’s slick and sticky from both of them. “Show me.” _

Show me.

_ Maybe it’s the newness of this reignited passion, or maybe it’s the familiarity of it - the way he learned it from her and she showed him in all those hours they spent in Fagan’s Corners. Or maybe it’s just the scrape of his stubble as he nuzzles her throat and the light touches of his fingertips trailing across her thighs and belly, up over her ribs, to her breasts and shoulders - his voice sin in her ear - but her exhaustion fades almost instantly. _

_ Her fingers move hard and fast, slip sliding over glistening flesh and folds, finding her clit, swollen and ripe, and working her up to a crescendo she’s not sure she’s ready for. _

_ He’s not stopping though. His kisses are as heavy as his touch is light and the words he’s whispering are soft and low and filthy. She tries to reach for him with her spare hand, but he grabs her wrist, squeezes hard enough that it almost hurts. _

_ “Do it, Karen,” he growls. “Do it now.” _

_ She presses down hard on herself, hips rising off the bed by their own volition as her climax cracks through her, snapping her spine, and making her cry out so loudly that she drowns the sound of the bells ringing in the distance, still trying tirelessly to will them to church. _

_ She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care about anything other than his hands and mouth and the warmth spreading through her body, leaving her weak and spent and entirely sated. _

  
  


~~~

The room is still shadows and she’s still stars.

Dimly he’s aware that she’s pushing his head away from her, and he’s equally aware that he doesn’t want to be pushed away, he wants to put his mouth on her again and drink her dry.

Still, there’s something to be said for overwhelming her. There’s something to be said for the diamond hard heat between his legs too. 

More curses. Blasphemy. 

_ God, Frank. Jesus fucking Christ. _

It’s all garbled. More sounds than words really and he’s almost impressed he can make them out.

She arches upwards, one hand gripping the sheets, the other his shoulder where her fingernails dig in hard enough to scar, body undulating and breath coming out hard and fast.

Her hips buck under his hands, rising off the mattress again. The candles flicker and the light catches the slickness spilled on her thighs, and again he wants to put his mouth on her, lap her sweetness up until there’s nothing left. But when he touches her leg, thumb smearing through the wetness, and bows his head, she grabs at him, fingers twisting through his.

“Please,” she chokes, as she hauls him up to her lips. “Please Frank.” 

He tries to answer, but she’s kissing him deeply, licking at his mouth, drinking down the taste of herself, words escaping between heavy breaths. 

“Let me have this. Let me have you. Let me have everything.”

He can do that. He can do anything she asks.

What follows is something he only remembers in fragments. 

There are long moments when all they do is kiss, where he loses himself in her mouth, the taste of her skin, her hair falling through his fingers like silk.

Her hands are everywhere: his lips, his shoulders, his chest, fingers wrapping around his cock and squeezing, pumping, until he groans and has to hold her wrists above her head to stop himself coming all over the sheets.

She wants to take him in her mouth too, tells him she wants to taste him, but when she straddles his knees and uses her tongue on his nipples and down his belly, he stops her.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“Course I don’t,” she whispers and lowers her head.

_ Hail Mary, full of grace. _

He sees stars. He thinks he might have seen heaven too.

And then she’s rising above him and he’s inside her. Her head is thrown back, fire in her hair like rays of the sun. His hands stutter on her thighs, her hips and she grabs them and brings them up to cover her breasts, rolls her hips wickedly against his. 

She doesn’t draw it out, doesn’t try for elegance or finesse and for that he’s grateful. She moves in long, firm strokes, clenching down on him and squeezing tightly, pushing him determinedly towards the edge, leaving him scrambling to catch up.

She _ could _make him beg, she’s just choosing not to.

Somehow in the haze, his hand finds its way between her legs again, and he strokes her hot, swollen flesh, thumb moving in tiny erratic circles over her clit.

“Go on,” he begs. “For me.”

_ For you too. _

She does.

For a second, she almost seems to flutter, body suspended in the starlight, the candle flames like wings, and then she heaves forward and crashes down on him, telling him she loves him over and over until her words feel like a sharp pain in his head that turns to blistering pleasure as it shoots down his spine.

He cries out, hands digging into her thighs as he spills inside her and loses himself in the spiral they made together.

  
  


~~~

_ “You remembered that.” _

_ She finds she’s shy about this, hesitant. _

_ “Ain’t like it was something I’m gonna forget... Not after seeing you do it.” _

_ Her cheeks burn, but when he smiles at her, there’s no smugness in it at all, and she decides to venture a little further. _

_ “You thought about it? About us?” _

_ He lifts an eyebrow. “Every goddamn day. Jesus Christ Karen.” _

_ She burrows further down into the blankets, into his body, and he moves to accommodate her. He’s always let her have as much as she wants, always been willing to adjust so she’s comfortable and safe. _

_ And she _ is _ safe. _

_ She takes his hand, twines their fingers together and brings his knuckles to her lips. _

_ There’s a triangle-shaped bruise on his wrist and she touches it gently and traces its outline. It’s new, the bruise still red and purple, no signs of fading yellows or greens. He must have got it recently. He must have stained someone else with blood, the way he stained her lips with wine. _

_ “This one?” she asks. _

_ “Ten.” _

_ “Why so high?” _

_ “I thought I’d lost you.” _

_ “And now?” _

_ “And now it doesn’t hurt anymore.” _

_ He turns, buries his face in her throat, and she listens to the sound of his breathing as he falls asleep. _

~~~

  
  


They don’t speak for a while afterwards - there doesn’t seem much reason to, and he thinks they might have said all the important things they need to say for now. 

What’s left now is her, stretched out on her belly next to him, hair a burst of gold against the pillow. She’s loose and languid, mouth curved into an easy smile, sweat drying on porcelain skin.

The candles are dying one by one, casting huge shadows on the walls and then gutting, leaving thin smoky trails in the air that dissipate almost instantly. They’ll all be gone soon and he’s fine with that. He doesn’t need anything but her.

He’s on his side, rubbing her back slowly, alternating between hard strokes that turn into scratches and featherlight touches that make her breath catch in her throat and leave her skin prickling as she arches her hips into the mattress.

They’ll make love again before morning. He can already feel his cock stirring between his legs, and when she looks at him, her pupils are blown and she’s biting her bottom lip. 

It’ll happen, but right now he’s content just to enjoy this.

“I’m sorry,” she says, as he runs his thumb down her cheek.

He smiles. Apparently he was wrong. Apparently there are always important things that need to be said when Karen Page is around.

“What for?”

“I should have trusted you.”

“I didn’t give you much reason to.”

“You gave me all the reasons in the world…” she touches his lips, traces their outline. “You’ve killed for me. You’d die for me. I don’t know what more I needed to be sure.”

He sighs and kisses her fingers. “Maybe you didn’t need the big gestures. Killing… dying… punishing. That’s all bullshit. Maybe you just needed me to listen … to _ stay _.”

She considers this. “Maybe.”

“You’ve said it before. I’m so focused on my own shit that I forget what’s important. But I’m not going to do that anymore. I’m going to…” he trails off, searching for the right words.

“Be better,” she says softly.

“Yeah,” he bobs his head. “be better.”

She pushes herself up on her elbows, turns slightly to face him. His eyes flicker to her breasts with their pale nipples and then down to her belly and the shadows below. She leans in and presses her lips to his forehead, his nose, his cheeks, and finally his lips, and he forgets the world around him as the last candle snuffs out.

~~~

“Does it hurt?”

She has one hand in his hair, fingers tracing the edges of the bullet wound in his skull.

“Not now.” 

“But it does hurt.”

He sighs. This is a difficult thing to describe. It’s like trying to explain the absence of pain when the absence _ is _ the pain.

“It’s just… cold, I guess. Even when I’m warm, I can feel it, like someone is holding ice on my head but it’s not numb yet. It’s only when I’m...” he trails off, runs his palm over her hip. This isn’t a thought he wants to finish. Not here. Not like this.

So she does it for him.

“Punishing,” she offers. “When you kill… It’s warm then?”

Not warm. Hot. _ Searing _. 

He nods, kisses her shoulder, takes a moment to breathe her in and hide from her words.

This is more intimate than anything they’ve done since the day they met. He feels like she’s brought out that rusty scalpel again and she’s cutting away at everything that’s good and decent to see the ugliness inside.

He thinks it might be okay to show it to her. Thinks he might already be most of the way there.

“It’s dead,” she says. “Almost. Dying maybe.”

Yeah, that sounds about right - there is most definitely a large part of him that is dead. 

She traces the circle one more time and then leans over him to put her lips to the scar tissue. He can hardly feel it and it both pains and exhilarates him that there’s a part of him she’ll never have.

Maybe some pain can’t ever be fully shared. Maybe it’s best they keep certain things for themselves.

“This is your worst wound.” her voice is strained and shaky, as if she’s not sure how much she should say. “This is where you died.”

He takes her hand, brings it to his lips.

“I won’t ask you to tell me about this one again…”

“You will," he says. "You have to, and it's okay.”

She nods. 

“I want to know about all the others.” Her eyes a huge, pupils blown, and he doesn’t think he has the power to say no, even if he wanted to. “Will you show them to me?”

“Yes,” he says. “I’ll show you anything you want.”

Anything. Even the dead parts.

~~~

Later, when she’s fast asleep beside him, arm slung across his middle, he kisses her forehead and slides out of the bed. He’s not exactly sure why he felt the need to get up. He isn’t hungry or thirsty and the bed and her body are both far warmer than the chilly air in the room.

He’ll go back soon, take her in his arms, hold on for as long as she’ll let him, love her for as long as he’s alive.

In the bathroom, he splashes his face with cold water over the sink and looks into the mirror. His eyes are dark and hooded, lips still a little swollen and red from kissing her. He runs a hand over his jaw and down his throat. The skin is smooth, the shave closer than he thought and briefly, he’s back on the edge of the tub, the smell of her filling him up, the blade at his throat a promise of something bigger than both of them.

She did that to him. He let her. And the thought continues to fuck him up in ways he couldn’t even imagine.

He heads back to the bedroom, listens to the silence. There’s no howling wind, no sound of wet snow and hail crashing against the window, no smell of acrid smoke.

There’s only Karen’s gentle breathing and the scent of their passion in the air.

He pulls the curtain aside to peer out into the night. It’s not clear outside, but the black sky is breaking through the grey clouds and the heavy fog has been replaced by a lighter mist. If he squints he can even see the slight silver glow from the moon. 

It’s still snowing heavily, but the flakes falling to the ground are delicate and pristine. Clean. Or maybe cleansed.

As it should be.

He gets back into bed, watches as the soft light plays on her skin, turning her silver and making her glimmer. 

Everything is as it should be.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Frank didn't want the story to progress just yet... It seems this is the issue with a slow burn. The man waits patiently to get the fire going but is unwilling to put it out for a while once it's started.
> 
> Hence another chapter of smut... 
> 
> According to Mr Castle, I will be allowed to tell the rest of the story after this.
> 
> Hope you all enjoy.

_ It’s just like last year, only exactly different. _

_ She’s been invited to spend Christmas with Matt and Foggy; Curtis said he is putting in a good word with Dinah so that maybe - maybe - Frank can come over too. It won’t be “Christmas” - of course it won’t - but it’ll be something, and maybe it’s about time they stopped looking for salvation in tradition and started finding it in one another. _

_ Karen thinks they already have. In fact, her and Frank just might be streets ahead of the rest. _

_ Not that it matters. Curtis, just messaged to say Madani said no, Frank isn’t invited if he comes alone. She sets two extra places or none at all. Those are the rules and she won’t be tested on them. The truth is Dinah told her exactly the same thing less than a week ago in a text that sounded very un-Dinah, full of exclamation points and frowning emojis that did little to convey the seriousness of the message. Karen thinks some of Curtis’ cheerfulness must be rubbing off on her. She thinks that might be some of the best news she’s heard since the day she met Dinah. _

_ As for her own plans, Matt and Foggy both seemed to know they too might need to set another place, and they both seemed to accept it. They’d be cordial, decent. They wouldn’t be anything but polite if she turned up with Frank on her arm. She’s just not sure she wants to do that to any of them. It feels too soon - too raw - and the air isn’t clear. _

_ Despite being instrumental in bringing them together, Matt hasn’t really asked about her and Frank, treating her a little like glass since she came back to work. It’s not uncomfortable - she’s not bothered by his reticence - it’s almost endearing if she’s honest, even if she knows that inside it’s hurting him in ways she never wanted him to hurt. _

_ Foggy has been a little more forthright, demanding to know what happened, how it happened, when it happened and if she’s happy that it did. _

_ She is. She is so happy now. She wasn’t when he asked but even then she wasn’t willing to give into it, tell him too much. And it broke her heart to look at her closest friend and have them both know that there were parts of herself she couldn’t share with him. _

_ So they have two arrangements, both pending, both subject to certain conditions. Neither one ideal but as Frank traces his fingertips down her arm, studying the way her skin prickles as if somehow this is the most fascinating thing he’s ever seen, as if her flesh itself is magic, she doesn’t want to go anywhere at all. _

_ She wants to be here with him and him with her, watch the snow fall and listen to the bells ring. _

_ It’s just like last year, only exactly different. _

~~~

They stay.

Whether by fate or design or just some unspoken agreement, neither of them makes any move or suggestion to leave Fagan Corners just yet.

He's not particularly interested in the whys and hows, and the most acknowledgement they give it is a brief call to Murdock and Foggy, and another to Curtis to tell them not to call in the cavalry just yet. They're fine. They're safe. They're just working a few things out.

Curtis snorts, makes some comment about euphemisms, but Murdock and Foggy keep Karen on the line for a little longer, and he hears her dodging questions and answering in monosyllables, trying unsuccessfully to push the conversation towards Nicodemus and his living arrangements until she gets back.

It doesn't matter. There'll be time for fuller conversations later. Again, they’re fine. They’re safe. They’re just working a few things out. Although he’s fairly certain Nelson and Murdock couldn’t give a fuck about him in this scenario and he likes it just fine that way.

“Gonna have some ‘splainin’ to do,” she says after she puts her phone down and slides into bed beside him.

“Got some other things to do first,” he answers, as he runs a hand up her inner thigh and parts her legs gently. “More important than ‘splainin’.”

More important than anything else too.

They leave the room sparingly, making short, and very uninteresting trips to the laundromat or to pick up food.

He tries once to take her out - see if the town has at least one decent restaurant where a lady can be wined and dined - maybe a little dancing - but he comes up empty handed. The one midrange restaurant is closed for renovations and the three Yelp reviews vary between two and three stars; the only other place mentioned is _ Big Tony’s _ and there’s no way in hell he’s taking her there.

She tells him not to worry - there’s time for all that later. Besides Fagan Corners never had much of anything.

Except of course, it has everything.

So they eat in the breakfast nook and they dance in the bedroom, swaying to whatever tune he decides to hum against her ear.

Mostly they make love, seldom leaving the bed for long periods and even when they do, the rush to divest themselves of clothing borders on nothing short of obsessive the second they walk through the door.

On some level, he realises he's been burning for this for years now, burning for her and everything that comes with her, and on another he still finds himself surprised every time she throws herself into his arms or when her lips find his in the darkness.

He's content on all counts not to question too much. He's doing what he said he would.

He's holding on and never letting go. He's being better.

~~~

"What's this?"

She's standing naked in the bedroom, his coat folded over her arm - he's asked her to get his phone out of his pocket because she was up and it's been bleeping and blarping incessantly, and somewhere in the back of his head where there's a tiny bit of space for something that isn't her and the feel of her skin under his hands, he remembers that he was supposed to give David a call.

But she's holding his phone in one hand and in the other is a long flattish black box and the memories come flooding back.

They're sitting on her fire escape and the bracelet Murdock gave her is twinkling in the hazy lights while the weight of the one he bought for her is like a stone against his chest.

There's a wet kitten on her lap mewling pitifully and the filigree bracelet is on her floor and they both know what it means, but he can’t meet her eyes and he's stuffing it back in his pocket anyway.

And that's apparently where it stayed for almost a year. 

It wasn't like he didn't know it was there, wasn't like he didn't feel its sharp corners or the soft leather, wasn't like he didn't take it out and look at it on the nights he couldn't sleep and imagine it fixed around her slim wrist.

And yet there was always something that stopped him giving it to her. And sure, there was the initial shame over the fact that it looked like he was trying to one up Murdock, but the truth is there have been so many other opportunities - so many other chances - since then. And yet…

And yet there she stands with the box in her hands and a question on her eyes.

He sits up straight in the bed, sheet pooling around his waist. The smell of them hangs heavy in the air, and the taste of her lingers in the back of his mouth.

"Give me that," he says and she hands it and the phone over, sits down on the edge of the mattress next to him.

He doesn't open it, doesn't want to remind himself that it was lacking, doesn't want to look at something beautiful that his mind has told him is ugly and unworthy.

"I got this for you," he says and she frowns. "Wanted to give it to you but it was never the right time."

He guesses there's no place for anything but brutal honesty between them. Guesses that's nothing new either.

A sigh and he puts it on the bedside table, with his phone, and combs his fingers through her messy hair, watches it glint in the weak and rapidly fading sunlight.

There's part of him that still doesn't believe that she's here and she's his. That, after everything, they found a way back to each other and to this.

She lays her palm flat against his cheek and presses a chaste kiss to his lips.

"I think…" she starts and then knits her brow, trails her fingernails down his chest in slow, maddening loops. "I think there's no right time for anything ever. I think you have to do what you have to do, and if you wait for the right time, you're never going to do it.”

He takes her hand in his, bring it to his lips and kisses her knuckles.

“Karen…”

“I think you have to _ make _the time right."

She's right - god, she's so right and he has a sudden image of himself, broken and battered, propped up on a gravestone, blood running into his eyes, pouring out of his mouth and Red looming over him like a goddamn demon, both a lifeline and a one-way trip straight into hell.

_ (I couldn't play ball with my boy, couldn't read my baby girl a bedtime story, couldn't take my wife to bed…) _

The truth is he _ should _have done all those things. Being bone tired and overwhelmed wasn’t a reason not to - it wasn’t even an excuse. He had everything and it slipped through his fingers.

There are so many things he still _ should _do.

He touches her hair, trails a finger over her shoulder, circles one of the many dark bruises he’s sucked into her skin. She smiles and her skin prickles and, when his gaze drops lower, her nipples are hard and stiff. 

He has everything again. And there _ is _ no right time. There's never a right time. And he’s wasted so much of what was already there. 

"Yeah." He curls a hand around the back of her neck, kisses her forehead, breathes in the scent of her hair.

“Yeah?”

He nods, stares at the box for a long time, and all of a sudden everything seems too much. Her and him and the last few days and all the weeks and months before that. Hospital rooms and exploding hotels, rejected confessions and denied promises. Gravestones and a burning pain that’s too alive to ever bury. 

And now her, and this, and the little black box of his failures.

Too much. Too much for them and this town and the light they’re creating inside it.

He grabs her and flips her over so that she hits the mattress with a low _ oof _ and a grin on her face that lights up the whole room.

“Yeah, except, it _ is _the perfect time for something,” he says as he nuzzles her throat, nipping at the soft skin of her shoulder, knowing that he’s hedging, that he’s distracting her and himself. Knowing that somehow with her that’s all right and he doesn’t need to to atone for it, the same way he doesn’t need to atone for anything if he doesn’t want to.

Except he does want to. He always wants to.

But not now. Not now, because she’s giggling and her face is flushed, lips soft and swollen when he kisses them.

“Oh really?” The throatiness of her voice belies the lightness of her tone, and behind the mirth in her eyes, her pupils are big and blown. “How can you tell?”

“You’re right. I’d better check…”

She’s already canting her hips up to his hand as he cups her between the thighs. She’s hot and wet, coating his palm and slicking his fingers as he slides them inside her. 

He’s nothing short of delighted.

“Yeah, perfect time,” he says but she’s already kissing him, hands twisting painfully sharp in his hair and sparks shooting down his spine. 

And it’s good and sweet, a tangle of loose limbs and wicked smiles, whispered promises and hissed demands, but later when she comes under his mouth and under his hands, when he’s buried so deep inside her and it’s hard to breathe and harder to think, he’s still acutely aware that the box and all its promises and failures is still there on the bedside table waiting for a right time that might never come.

~~~

“You ever wanna talk - about anything: Kevin, your dad, your mom - Todd…” he spits the word out. “You just say.”

Water splashes against his skin and her hair is damp and stuck to his chest. The candles twinkle like fireflies in the shadowed bathroom. She smells of patchouli and rosemary, the foam in the bath like rose, but he can still taste her musk in his mouth, still smell the scent of their desire on his hands.

It’s late - he’s not sure how late exactly, time with her seems to take on a different meaning, a different quality and he finds himself floating - no, spiralling - through twilight mornings and midnight in the afternoon, until the only thing showing him that the Earth is still rotating around the sun is the numbers on his phone when he bothers to look at them.

And he doesn’t like to look at them.

Still though, they’ve been here long enough for his skin to start pruning and the sky is dark through the small bathroom window. He’s kicked the hot tap on at least four times and the last time the water didn’t feel quite as searing as before. 

She nods, brings his hand to her lips and kisses his knuckles, places it back on her hip, where he’s content to let his fingers slide slowly down her thigh and then up her breasts.

“Sometimes…” she starts and trails off.

“Sometimes?”

She sighs. “Sometimes, I think there’s so much to say. So much to tell you. So many things you don’t know and I want to go over them all again. And other times it feels like there’s nothing. I did what I did. It is what it is. Nothing is going to change that. 

“It’s like I want to explain, but I don’t want to make excuses… blame anyone else.”

“But you haven’t made excuses. You haven’t blamed anyone else.” 

If anything, it’s been the complete opposite. She bears her guilt and the guilt of everyone else involved so they don’t have to. Paxton Page with his warm beer and tattered sweater, sitting grimly in his sticky booth and putting his judgment out for the world to see is evidence enough of the burden she has on her shoulders.

“Yeah…” she says uncertainly. “I just don’t want you to think I haven’t faced up to it.”

“I don’t think that.”

“My father does. He thinks I’m in denial about it, that I don’t want to admit it’s my fault and that I was selfish and irresponsible and stupid. I think he thinks I don’t deserve to say Kevin was my family.”

_ Yeah, all of that’s called projection_, he thinks uncharitably but he stays quiet.

“He doesn’t believe that I’ve changed… that I’ve tried every single day of my life to make up for what I did.” She sighs. “I don’t know if he’ll ever believe it.”

He circles her nipple, finger sliding through soap and bath oil.

She’s been through so much - much more than he ever imagined. Hail Mary’s, penance, punishment. The time for forgiveness and second chances is long overdue.

“We’re still here - if we go a few metres down the road tomorrow, we could find him at _ Big Tony’s _… if that’s what you want.”

She shakes her head and the water ripples across his torso. 

“I’ve asked…” she snorts dryly, “...no, I’ve begged. He doesn’t want to see me.”

This is undeniably true. While she never expected a blow by blow account of the conversation he had with Paxton and he felt it best not to offer it up, he doesn’t think that particular part of Paxton Page’s viewpoint on the situation is a secret.

Still, he persists.

“He doesn’t, but what was it you said? You have to make it the right time,” he says.

He knows even before she’s said anything that he’s overstepped. This thing they have which he finds he doesn’t have the words to describe and also completely unnecessary to even begin to define, has limits. There are still wounds and scars between them, sore spots that become inflamed when you poke at them too much.

She sits up straight in the tub, turns to look at him over her shoulder, hair hanging in dark ropes across her pale skin, soap suds running down her spine. Water droplets glisten on her face and her eyes are overly bright and hard.

“I don’t want to.” She says it slowly, softly even, but she enunciates each word perfectly and the hard set of her jaw shows him there’s no room for debate on this.

He regards her for a few seconds - she doesn’t shy away from his rage and he owes it to her to do the same - and then he nods puts a hand on her back, curls it gently over her shoulder. 

“Okay,” he says brushing his thumb across the nape of her neck. “Okay.”

She gives him a small tight smile and she doesn’t resist when he draws her back to his chest, but her shoulders are still stiff and she doesn’t relax against him immediately.

“You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” He kisses her hair, hands roaming across her belly and then up over her ribs to cup her breasts. “It’s your call. Only you get to decide what you need to do.”

She nods and some of the tension ebbs out of her.

“Some things… some things there isn’t a time for - wrong or right. Some things - you just have to let them go…”

That is true too. There are so many seemingly conflicting ideas that he finds he is able to hold at the same time now, as if she’s opened something in him that allows him to see the world without the blood-tinged single-mindedness of before.

“Are you letting him go?” he asks.

“I have to.” Her hands find his. “No matter how hard it is. Even if it tears me apart, I can’t spend my life waiting for something that might never happen.”

No, she can’t and again he’s confronted with the stark reality of what he could have lost - what he _ did _lose.

_ I’m here. I’m listening. I’m being better. _

He kisses her shoulder, kicks the hot tap again, and watches as the water crashes into the tub, forming bubbles and ripples that shimmer in the candlelight.

“If it tears you apart, I’ll be here to help you pick up the pieces. Whatever you need me to be…”

She’s silent for a while, hands tight on his, and then she lets out a ragged gasp that’s more than half a sob.

“Thank you,” she whispers. “Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

He tightens his arms around her, rests his head on her shoulder and listens to her breathing, the lapping of the water against their skin. 

They need to get out soon. It’s been hours and the water is tepid at best, but for now he’s content to hold her for as long as she needs.

_ Whatever you need me to be. _

She turns to kiss his face and in a moment of absolute and complete clarity, he thinks that those might be the only words she’s ever wanted to hear from him.

~~~

Thursday.

That twilight morning where everything is tinged in silver and time and space ceases to exist.

Spiralling.

The snow is falling heavily outside covering Fagan Corners in a soft white cloud. 

Frank doesn’t care about the soft white cloud or about Fagan Corners.

He doesn’t care about anything other than the fact that Karen Page is sitting naked in his lap with her head thrown back, hair the colour of summer sunlight even in the gloom, and she’s bearing down on him so heavily that he's almost sure she'll break him into a million pieces.

He wouldn't mind if she did. There are worse ways to go than warm and wet and buried so deep between Karen Page's thighs that it feels like he’s about to lose his not only his mind but everything he’s ever had tethering to his own life and sense of self.

_ La petite mort. _The little death.

He understands the phrase now; he’s died so many times. It’s just that now, with her, it feels like living.

"Please," she whispers. "Please."

No need to beg. No need to even ask. Anything. She can have anything. 

“Come for me,” she gasps. “Please.”

Well, almost anything. He cares about that too.

He lays a kiss on her jaw, another across her collarbones.

“You first.” 

She lets out a growl of frustration and bares her teeth at him, but she doesn’t stop him when he takes her hand from his knee and presses it between her legs.

He's made her come three times already today, mainly with his mouth, drinking her down until it felt like they were both drowning, and she was nothing but quivering flesh and shaking bones, thighs pressed to the sides of his head and nails sharp across his scalp. 

But this - this is a little different. Trickier. Requiring more skill to get right than the deliberate and precise ministrations of his fingers and tongue.

Not that he minds. Not that it could be even remotely considered a problem. As he already knows, time moves differently here at the end of the world and he has more than enough to spare. And even if he didn’t, this is Karen Page, and he’s in her bed, and when a man gets that honour, there are certain very high standards he should hold himself to.

Yes, he cares very much about that too.

She arches back again, fingers a flurry of glistening movement, and a red flush spreads over her breasts like magma under her skin.

She’s magnificent. He’s always thought so, even when he didn’t know he was as far gone as he was, even when he still thought he had some control over this thing between them and that it hadn’t taken on a life of its own. But there’s something about her like this - uninhibited and powerful, maybe even a little annoyed that leaves him nothing short of mesmerised. 

Karen Page has always had an effect on him he can’t explain.

He tightens his arms around her waist, tilts his pelvis upwards and she lets out a throaty groan that echoes off the walls and right into his skull. 

“Come on,” she begs.

“_You _ come on.” 

She groans again, moves her hips in a perfect circle that has him digging his fingers into the mattress and squeezing his eyes shut to stop himself from just letting go and giving into the inevitable.

It’s a small victory - not hollow, but fleeting nonetheless. He’s _ not _ going to last. She _ is _Karen Page and he, despite everything that’s been written and said about him, is just a man.

As if to prove the point, her hips collide exquisitely with his again and her hand leaves her clit to grab at him for more leverage. But he’s ready this time and, in one smooth movement he lifts her, holds her prone, and shifts to his knees before shoving her fingers back between her legs.

“Goddamn you, Frank.”

Yes, this is a sentiment most people would agree with, himself included. Goddamn him indeed.

She pitches forward when he lets her go and he wraps his arms around her waist, rests his forehead in the hollow of her throat, tastes the sugar and salt of her skin.

“Tell me what you need,” he breathes. 

Anything. _ Everything_.

“I need you to come,” she hisses and he stifles a grin against her shoulder.

“Told you already, you first.”

The truth is, despite his bravado, he’s not sure how long he can keep this up. She might just have him on this one.

“Goddamnit,” she swears again. “You’re being _ such _an asshole.”

He nuzzles her throat, glances down to see her fingers circling her wet flesh hard and fast. “Yeah, you ain’t exactly the first to say that.”

She lets out another moan of frustration, fingers more frantic than before, hips crashing into his in a series of hard, determined thrusts that leave him gasping for breath and fighting for control. 

There’s another moment that he thinks he’s lost; white hot heat shoots down his spine and his pelvis lifts to meet hers, a wave of pleasure unfurling in his belly. Briefly, a triumphant smile slides over her face and her eyes glint wickedly but at the last second, he grits his teeth and wrenches himself away from oblivion.

She almost snarls at him, free hand scraping across his shoulder hard enough to draw blood. And, as she tries to rear back to hit him with another perfect roll of her hips, he tightens his arms around her, limiting her movements to small, weak strokes that buy him a few stolen moments, keeping him poised on the precipice but not yet ready to fall into it.

For however long that lasts.

He has no delusions that his surrender is inevitable, no matter how good a front he’s putting on. No matter how much he _ cares _.

“Fuck,” she says under her breath. “_Fuck! _”

“You know...” he finds some mock offence to throw into his tone, although the effect is mostly ruined by his own heavy grunts and the sweat dripping off his brow. “You kiss me with that mouth...”

It’s the wrong thing to say, or - in hindsight - completely the right thing. 

He expects another curse, maybe another cascade of sharp fingernails down his back or at least an exasperated frown, but he gets none of them.

Instead she stops almost immediately, not even finishing the roll her hips were midway through, hand motionless between them.

It’s quiet too. No moans or grunts, no wet sounds of her thrusting against his cock - even her breathing is silent and outside the snow that he doesn’t care about seems suspended in the air.

Briefly - stupidly - he thinks he's stumbled upon a respite and she’ll concentrate on herself now, bring him along for the ride only when she’s good and ready like he asked.

It’s a nice fantasy - this one where she lets him have his way. It’s a really nice fantasy.

She lifts a slow hand to his chin, deliberately pushes his head back so she can see his face and runs her hand through his wet hair where it sticks to his scalp. Her eyes are almost completely black, ringed only with the tiniest hint of blue at the very edges, her lips ruby red slicked with his saliva, and dark marks from his mouth stand out on her neck like brands.

She is everything. 

And then those red lips curl and those black eyes go narrow and sly. 

“Yes,” she says in a voice far too steady for the situation. “Yes I do kiss you with this mouth.”

He sees it coming but he's too slow or stupid or high on her to react. She rises up on her knees, puts her arms around his neck and arches her mouth over his, tongue sliding between his teeth.

Her mouth, as always, is hot and wet and, like that first moment in the parking lot of an old bakery and that second first moment when she had a blade to his throat, when he starts kissing her, he never wants to stop. She’s sweet and gentle and it’s so easy to just fall apart under her tongue, so easy to ignore the fact that her hand is no longer between her thighs and her arms are around his neck. 

Except he can’t.

“Karen,” he says through desperate kisses as he reaches for her wrist. “We talked about this.”

“Did we?” 

He chuckles, shakes his head, but as he tries to push her hand back down, she rolls up on her knees and pushes heavily against on his cock.

It’s another moment when he thinks he’s done for, that he’s just going to spiral out of control and leave her behind. He sucks in a breath, fingers stuttering on her wrist, torn between trying to control her thrusts and trying to move her hand back between her legs. But when she rises up again, he abandons that and grabs her hip to hold her in place, hand sliding through sweat, and struggling for purchase.

“Going to have to make up your mind, Frank.”

“Yeah, someone ain’t playing fair.”

She shrugs, plants kisses along his jaw and throat.

“Not about being fair."

No, it’s not, and he guesses he wasn’t exactly being fair earlier. Still though, even the tiny thrusts he’s allowing her do are becoming slower, less focused. Ebbing. Again, he thinks she has actually decided to let him have his way now that she’s proved her point - he even lowers his gaze to look down at where they are joined, fully expecting her hand to drop between them at any second.

But she’s Karen Page. And he really should know better. He _ really _ should.

She clenches around him, smooth, slick muscles going tight on his cock.

“K- Karen…” he starts but she kisses him again, draws him down into her, as she clenches again, harder this time.

“Shh…” she says softly. “I’ve got this. I’ve got you.”

He wants to tell her he knows she does. That’s the problem. This is the very essence of the problem and the definition of cheating, but he can barely form a coherent thought and any words he’s trying to turn into sentences just come out garbled nonsense. And suddenly there’s nothing in the whole world other than the sensation of her tensing around him, slippery walls contracting and expanding so fast, she’s almost fluttering.

“Fuck,” he breathes as his fingernails dig into her, and that smug smile slides over her face again.

“Yes,” she agrees. "Fuck."

And then she does flutter. And he doesn’t so much tip over the edge as race towards it and throw himself into the abyss. The white hot heat shoots down his spine again, explodes in his belly and his hips rock up to meet hers.

She arches backwards, body bending like a bow, breasts standing out like stiff peaks and he abandons the idea of trying to hold her in place. He lifts a hand from her hip and trails his fingertips gently down her throat, between her breasts and over her belly, up again across her back, over her shoulders and down the soft flesh of her inner arm.

Goosebumps erupt on her skin and she shivers, fingers suddenly back between her thighs, working hard and fast. One, two, three hard strokes and she’s crashing, leaving him behind by a split second as her body trembles and prickles, the flutter around his cock now a full hard spasm that sends him spiralling.

He grabs at her, hands desperate and fingers twitching, as every muscle in his body seizes up for a wonderful terrible moment that seems to last for both a split-second and an eternity, before he releases every ounce of his pent-up energy into her.

And then she’s holding his head to her breasts, hands in his hair, hushing him even as she draws those final weak shudders out of him leaving him spent and slack and breathless.

It feels like they stay like that for a very long time in this place where time doesn’t pass at all, but when he opens his eyes, he sees the soft snow blanket outside and the weak sunlight breaking through the clouds.

She’s breathing his name over and over, and when he lowers her down to the pillows and kisses her lips, there’s an incredibly satisfied smile on her face.

He cares very much about that too.

~~~

_ “You decided what you wanna do today? Who we’re going to disappoint?” _

_ He’s looking at her in that way that says he’s made up his mind about what his preference is but he’ll do whatever she wants anyway and he won’t complain no matter what her decision is. If she wants to take him along to Murdock, he’ll go, bear Matt’s righteous tone and smiles that don’t go to his eyes. He’ll make small talk with Foggy through the scowls, and chit chat with Nurse Temple if she’s there even though she has eyes like lasers and doesn’t pull her punches. _

_ If she wants to go alone, that’s fine too. He’ll find ways to amuse himself, wait for her forever, because he’s already waited forever and he knows he can do it. Not that she would. Not that she would ever want to. _

_ Or of course, there’s Dinah and Curtis. And this would be their first non-Christmas Christmas together and maybe they need their space, although of all the options they seem like the best, most supportive and least judgemental. It could work. It could. _

_ But she thinks she’s having the same thought that he is. She thinks they want to same thing. _

_ Second chances. Be better. _

_ “Yes,” she says. “I know what I want to do.” _

~~~

She lies with her back to his belly, and he trails his knuckles down her arm, watching as the tiny hairs on her skin stand up straight.

He’s not tired anymore, but he is languid, lazy even, still a little overwhelmed and maybe a little high from her and the glow they’ve created together.

“You asleep?” he asks and lays a kiss on her shoulder.

“No.” Her voice is thick and slurred, maybe even heavier than his.

He brushes his fingertips over her nape of her neck, traces the ridge of her shoulder blade and she shivers.

“This a thing?” he asks he runs his hands further down her body, the gooseflesh following the path of his touch. 

“Maybe.” He can hear the smile in her voice and he grins, presses another kiss to her hair.

He’s quiet for a while, content to just draw loops and twirls on her body, watch it flush, feel her tremble as the twilight morning gives into the afternoon dusk. And she’s content to let him. She doesn’t move much but she shakes as he finds the secrets under her skin, gasps as his stubble scrapes across her shoulder.

And then he’s not content anymore.

“Show me,” he whispers.

She doesn’t ask what he means. She turns over onto her back, and when he props himself up on elbow and kisses her, her hands move between her legs to rub small circles into her clit.

And for a second, he wants to take over, wants to put his hands on her like that too, feel the wetness of her flesh, those slick muscles that send him into spiralling, but she doesn’t need his help and instead he watches, studies, learns her movements and techniques.

It doesn’t take long. 

His featherlight strokes and her furious fingers combine with his gentle kisses on her brow and his filthy words in her ear and suddenly she’s keening, those tiny circles becoming messy and erratic as her flesh quivers and her body twists off the sheets.

“Frank, I’m...” she rasps.

“Do it Karen,” he says breathlessly. “Do it now.”

_ Show me. _

Her hips rise off the bed one final time as his name falls from her lips.

She shows him heaven as she comes.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a slightly shorter chapter this time, but I should be able to update again tomorrow or Monday - hopefully tomorrow. Initially this and the next chapter were one longer chapter but it just seemed more appropriate to split them for some reason.
> 
> The end is so close. 
> 
> Thank you so much for all your support and kind words. Please let me know if you enjoyed this chapter.
> 
> Also I'm sorry...

Like all good things, it comes to an end.

It happens slowly. Organically. Time starts making sense, and the mornings give into afternoons too quickly. Night falls as and when it's supposed to, and he finds himself glancing at the blue numbers on his phone more regularly - not with any real plan to do anything with the information he's gleaning from them, but just with the knowledge that he will have to at some point.

Karen's restless too. Not with him and not with them, but he knows she's worried about work and rent and the general standard of adulting people are meant to uphold even through times of crisis… and times of great joy.

Sometimes it feels like the world is crueller than he is.

Their love-making becomes desperate - needy - and he finds himself studying her, tracing her lines and curves with his fingers and his mouth over and over again so he can commit it to memory like each encounter is the last one they'll have.

The fact is, deep in his bones, he knows he's running out of time.

_ They're _ running out of time.

It also doesn’t go unnoticed by him that they've avoided any real conversation about what will happen back in Hell's Kitchen. He thinks they’re both clinging to these stolen moments away as some kind of respite from real life… a respite that will be shattered by talking about the future. 

Not that it  _ should _ change anything; they are stronger now than they were when she left. Abandoning Fagan Corners is just as simple as that - leaving the badness behind to build something new and good.

Still, their return to the real world looms in front of him like some vast, impersonal entity he can't quite see but knows is waiting.

And he doesn't want to admit it but it scares the shit out of him.

~~~

It comes to a head one sombre wintry morning when he wakes up to find the bed empty.

He's warm and still half asleep, both dreading that they're one day closer to whenever this adventure ends, and relishing the fact that it's early, and maybe the morning won't be so eager to make sense and usher in the afternoon. Maybe it'll last for all the days and nights he needs it to.

Of course, none of that means anything if she's not with him to enjoy it.

He sits up, sheets pooling around his hips. He's naked and warm, wonderfully spent from the night before. If she was next to him, he'd just sink back down onto the mattress and take her in his arms and it wouldn't matter what happens after.

But she's not next to him. She's sitting in the breakfast nook with a blanket draped over her shoulders, staring out of the window at the grey day. She's clasping a cup of steaming fruit tea and the room smells of peaches and raspberries.

He doesn't say anything for a while. He’s content to just watch her, eyes travelling along the pale curve of her neck, down to the slim line of her arm to those strong, wicked fingers; content to let that feeling he thought he'd forgotten fill him up until it seems like his heart will overflow and he'll be nothing but a puddle on the floor.

_ Hail Marys. Penance. _ _ Forgiveness. Second chances. _

_ It's all about those second chances. _

"I know you're awake," she says without turning.

"Yeah, you got me."

She looks to the side, smiling to herself.

"You got nothing better to do than check me out, Castle?"

He snorts. "No ma'am, can't say I do."

Her smile widens and a blush spreads up her neck and turns her cheeks pink.

"Thought the big bad Punisher was made of stone."

It's his turn to smile and he rises from the bed, pads across the room to stand behind her and rest a hand on her shoulder.

"No, you never thought that."

She reaches up to cover his fingers. "Guess I didn't."

Briefly a ray of sunlight breaks through the clouds, bathing everything in a hazy gold glow.

"Penny for your actual thoughts."

"They're not worth that much."

"Ain't true."

"How do you know?"

_ Because Karen Page has never had a thought that isn't worth everything.  _

He kisses the top of her head and she leans back against him. "Just do, because it's you.”

"I was thinking about deadlines and clients, my apartment … Nicodemus."

"Foggy still got him?"

She nods. 

"And Matt has paid me back the rent he owed me, so I'm good for now."

"Money ain't an issue, I've got enough."

"That's not the point."

“I know.”

She sighs deeply, fingers tightening on his. Outside that singular ray of sunshine has disappeared.

"We can't stay here," she says. "No matter how wonderful it's been… _ I _ can't stay here. You know that."

Yeah, he knows that. It's not good for them. It's not good for  _ her _ and even he couldn't imagine something crueller than making her stay. And yet all he can think is that they  _ can _ stay forever. Just here in this room at the end of everything, dancing in the bedroom and making love as much as they want. 

They don't need the world and the world doesn't need them.

Except that's not true.

"When?" He asks and her shoulders shake.

He frowns but then she puts her teacup on the table and stands, blanket falling to the floor. She's naked underneath, all long lines and gentle curves, skin smooth as porcelain and soft as silk, and his breath hitches in his throat.

It’s all about those second chances.

She leads him back to the bed, draws him down on top of her.

"Not now," she says as he plants kisses on her breasts. "But soon. Very soon."

_ Soon… _ he wonders if he can work with that.

~~~

It's different from before inasmuch as every time with her is different. She's sweeter, hesitant even - her kisses deep and desperate; and her touches alternate between heavy scratches down his spine that make him lose time, and featherlight whispers across his scarred skin where he finds it again.

She burns him exquisitely either way - an icy coldness and a searing heat that make him feel like his entire soul is being scraped apart as he fights for air and for consciousness and for her.

Always for her.

_ Hold on, both hands, and never let go. _

_ I want there to be an after for you. _

_ You can love somebody else instead of another war. _

_ Make it mean something. _

What follows is such an intense burning pleasure that it makes him sob, heavy tears splashing on her skin as a wave of emotion rises in the back of his throat and threatens to choke him.

She smiles up at him, lips swollen and full from kisses, but as her climax courses through her body and into his, he has a split second to notice that she's crying too.

_ Stay, please. _

~~~

Time  _ does  _ move differently that day. 

When they eventually rise to shower and make coffee, it's already past four in the afternoon, and after they've gone to the store to get something to eat, it's almost seven.

It wasn't the kind of senseless passing of time that he'd hoped it would be, but he guesses this is the sign he's been waiting for.

They need to go. They need to move on.

That night, for the first time they don't make love. He wants her but it feels inconsequential - unimportant - in the face of that dreaded return back to reality. Instead he curls his body around hers, breathes in the scent of her hair and holds her as tight as he dares.

She strong but he still worries about breaking her.

_ Hold on, both hands and never let go. _

The blue lights on his phone don't need to tell him he's run out of time.

~~~

She’s watching him when he wakes up, eyes brighter than the Californian sky on a summer’s day.

“Hey.”

His voice is thick and slurred with the morning and she smiles and touches his hair where it’s sticking up straight on his head.

“Hey.”

Weak sunlight shines in through the window, playing across his skin, across hers, turning them both into shadows and somehow making the world seem colder than it should be. Dustmotes dance and twirl in the haze like little flecks of gold and silver.

She’s quiet, fingers threading through his hair and then trailing down over his jaw to his neck and shoulders. She draws patterns on him - loops and squiggles,  _ spirals  _ \- and he leans into her touch, words bunching up in the back of his throat, tongue heavy and stupid in his head.

It doesn't matter if he can't speak. They never needed words. They can have this. 

_ Please… _

“It’s time,” she says. "I have to go."

It’s not as hard to hear as he thought it would be. It doesn’t make him tense up, doesn’t make his gut clench. It feels resigned, wistful even, a strange sensation of coming back down to earth after a wonderful dream. Except the dream is real and so is the after.

He takes her hand in his and kisses each of her fingers.

“I know.”

She nods uncertainly and presses her lips into a firm line, eyes shimmering, and he realises she also has words stuck in the back of her throat.

He reaches out to touch her face, but before he can say anything, she starts to speak, voice low and hesitant like she's scared of making a mistake.

"I’ve never had anything like this. Never had anything this …  _ real _ . Not with anyone… and…" she trails off, words disappearing into the shadows.

"And?" 

She takes a deep breath and he has the distinct impression she's steeling herself against something. "And I want you to know that no matter what happens, this has been the best time of my life."

He frowns, hand stuttering in midair between them, before he lowers it to her cheek.

"What's gonna happen?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know. But I don't ever want you to doubt us."

"I don't…" he props himself up on his elbow turns her face towards his. "What's going on, Karen?"

"Nothing."

"Come on. Don't do that."

_ We don’t lie. _

"I guess I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed. A little … I don't know, scared."

Despite his earlier optimism, he doesn't like where this conversation is heading. There's an uneasy knot forming in his gut, not quite uncomfortable yet, but tightening steadily.

"Ain’t no need to be scared."

She smiles wanly. "These past few weeks have been… they've been so intense, like all the highs and lows a person can have in one small moment, you know?"

Yeah, he guesses he does know. It felt like that for him when he first realised his feelings for her, back when he was mourning Maria and thought he could only ever love war and death again. Difference is, he had all the time in the world. She’s had a few weeks.

"It's always been slow between us," she continues, as if she's reading his thoughts, which she may as well be. "Sometimes too slow. There was always something going on. You, me, the trial, Maria, Matt… David and then Billy… we never had time…"

Her golden hair falls through his fingers. 

"And then suddenly we did."

She nods. 

"Yeah. We did. And it was still slow. Even when it was wrong, I wanted to do it right and so did you."

That knot tightens exponentially and he has to stop himself from choking.

"Don't say this ain't right, Karen."

"No, no. I'm not saying that at all," she places a hand on his chest over his heart. "It's not just right… It's so much more than that.

"But these past few weeks - it's been all the highs and lows. I feel like I've been living through the worst time and the best time all at once. Do you know what I mean?"

"Yeah, I get it." He runs two fingers down her arm, and her skin prickles. "But we can leave the worst times behind… we can leave and we don't ever need to come back if you don't want to."

It’s the best he has - it’s  _ all _ he has - and with anything else it should be enough. But it isn’t. 

Her eyes are stormy and that knot in his gut is pulling taut and painful, and when she draws her hand back to her chest, he knows this isn't going to end the way he's hoping.

"Frank, I need to go to Hell's Kitchen alone. Without you. I need… I need some time."

He feels the punch to his insides before he's even parsed her words. It makes him gasp, makes his chest clench and his fingers twitch on her skin, even as he tries to hold them still. His gut twists so tightly that he thinks he's going to throw up and all he can hear is the blood roaring his head.

_ Say something. Stop her. Ask her to take it back. Beg. _

_ Anything. Anything to make it go away. _

But it’s like he’s frozen and all he can do is look at her: her cocked head, her shimmering eyes, the sunlight on her pale skin and the ruby redness of her mouth.

"It's okay," she says, putting a hand on his arm. "It's not like that… it's not the end."

Except it's not okay and it is like "that", and it is the end.

She might not lie to him, but it feels like she did, and it doesn’t matter because even if she had just laid God's most honest truth out on the sheets between them, it doesn't mean she doesn't hurt him. It doesn't mean she doesn't tear him apart as easily as she always has. It doesn't mean he  _ understands _ .

He looks down at her hand, the shining pewter nailpolish, the knuckles that are whiter than the rest of her skin. He wants to cover it with his, but he thinks that will be cheating, rushing forward to the making up part without sorting out all the bits in between.

"What…” he swallows. “What is it then?"

She sucks her lip into her mouth.

"Frank…"

"I told you when I found you that I'm never letting you go again." He fixes her with a stare so hard that she gulps and averts her eyes. "Don't make me a liar."

"I'm not," she says, hand tightening on his arm. 

"You are."

"No, it's not like that."

"Then tell me what it's like." He means to sound harsh, but his voice comes out strained and thin. Pleading. "If you've got something to say to me, you say it now." 

She shudders, blinks tears out of her eyes, and without thinking he breaks his own rules and covers her hand with his. "Please."

_ Please... _

And even though he wants to stare her down, fight her like he always did in the past, he can’t. He bows his head, concentrates on where their fingers are linked, where the sunlight touches them and the dustmotes glint like stars. He allows himself the luxury of knowing this is hurting her too and somehow that makes him feel worse.

Karen Page should never hurt. The reasons don't matter. 

The silence stretches and he tries to get his breathing under control, to ease that terrible tangled knot that's spreading to the rest of his body, to stop the roaring heat in his head and then terrible slice of ice cold cutting through it all.

The bullet in his brain, the hole in his heart. The  _ memento mori _ under his skin.

_ Please… _

One of them is always begging for mercy, for penance. For absolution.

Sometimes, like now, it's all three.

And then her hand is in his hair again, fingers trailing softly through the curls, tracing the outline of the bullet that took everything away from him.

He thinks she'll ask him to look at her, and her voice will tremble as she does, but neither of those things happen. She leaves him bowed and broken and when she talks her voice is low but very firm.

"When I came here - before you found me - it wasn't because I wanted or needed to be here . Kevin has been gone a long time and I haven't been back. I've found ways other ways to remember him… to honour him.

"I came here now because before all that stuff with Ella and Wayne, I wanted to show you who I was and what I’d done… No matter how ugly it was, no matter how bad it was, I wanted you to know, and I wanted you to love me anyway."

"I did. I  _ do _ ."

"But then after that night, I didn't know how anymore.  _ I _ didn't know if you  _ could _ love me, if I was forgivable."

He squeezes her hand. "Karen, please…"

"So I came back because you showed me I didn't deserve the mercy of remembering on my own terms. I came back  _ because _ I hate this town, because I hate every memory I have of it, because I hate the ground and the sky, and the air, because I hated who I was here and I deserved to be surrounded by that. I deserved to feel the full …"

"Don't do this."

"No," her voice is sharp and her eyes almost blazing. "Let me finish. I need to say this."

He bites his lip, huffs heavily as the unease tightens in his belly. He wants to beg her to stop, tell her it's all in the past and there's no reason to dwell, but he knows she won't be dissuaded. She never is.

"I came  _ looking _ for punishment,  _ hoping  _ for it more than I ever did before … And  _ you  _ found me… and you gave me all this," she almost laughs. "I mean, how's that for irony?"

He glances up then. He's shaking, and his eyes are hot and wet.

"I still don't understand," he says. 

"I know." She touches his face, gives him a sad smile. "Maybe you can't. Maybe this is something you just need to accept rather than understand."

He shakes his head. 

"I've done enough of that - having shit happen without understanding why. Don't ask me to do it again. Not with you."

She stares at him, chewing the inside of her cheek, and this time he doesn't look away.

"Okay.” she says eventually. “Okay, I'll try."

She takes a moment before she speaks, glancing around the room as if the answers are hiding in the dark corners. 

"I came to the place I've spent years trying to forget, the place that is my punishment, and I got you instead. I got…" a sob forces its way out of her throat but she's smiling and her eyes are shining. "... everything I ever wanted. I got the chance to forgive myself and see the girl I was in a different light. This awful place that sucked the life out of me, that gives me the shivers of shame every time I think about it, has given me one of the best gifts, the best memories. It's given me something I wouldn't trade for the world.”

“Then why are you doing this?”

"Because it's not everything. It can't be. There are things I still need to do. Things I need to do alone."

"What things?"

"You asked me to try and forgive that stupid 19 year old girl. To accept her for what she was. I need to do that. I need to try, and I can't do that when I'm with you and you love me so much that anything I did doesn't matter - when all I want to think about is you and us and how nothing should work but somehow everything does." She stops. "Who knows? Maybe you need to do that too."

Maybe he does, except for the fact that he's done it already. He spent years doing it and fighting her every step of the way. It didn’t work of course, but the least he could do is offer her the same courtesy and steadfast belief she did for him. 

Somewhere between the bullet in his brain and the knot in his belly, there's the smallest, slimmest shard of clarity.

They always did come from the strangest of places. 

"You need to know you can leave it behind and still have this."

She nods. "I know. I'm counting on it. But right now  _ I _ need to be better. For me. Do you understand?"

The sliver of clarity becomes a shard and the shard becomes the knowledge that this decision has already been made and fighting it is just a waste of time. 

He rolls onto his back, stares at the ceiling. 

"Yeah." The word tastes like poison in his mouth, but he guesses after everything, after all his bullshit over the past few years where he's played with her heart, left her behind, admitted his feelings and denied them in the next breath because he's so busy fighting a war he's too stupid to know he's already lost, the least he can give her is some space if that's what she needs.

"It won't be long," she says. "But I need you to trust me… trust this."

She lays a hand over his heart and he covers it with his own.

It makes sense, even if it doesn't.

"I need to forgive myself and I also need to know I can come back to us on my own terms, and that it'll still be the same. That it isn't just this moment in time."

"It's not," he squeezes her fingers. "Not this time."

"I know, but I need to  _ know _ ."

Of course she does. And there's really nothing left to say. Nothing left to fight. He doesn’t think there ever was.

"Don't you make me a liar, Karen Page. You don’t get to do that."

She smiles. "I won't. I promise."

"I love you," The words are easier than ever.

"And it means everything."

"Yeah," he says. "Yeah it does."

It always has.

She leans in and kisses him. His hands go to her waist and his fingers dig into her skin, and she pulls his head to her breast and holds him tighter than she ever has.

He closes his eyes, loses himself in the smell of her.

"What am I supposed to do in the meantime? While you’re not with me?"

"What you always do. What you're made to do. All the parts of it."

All the parts… Frank Castle. The Punisher. Husband. Father. Killer.

He doesn't ask anything else. He just holds her and listens to her heart beat in her breast.

And then it's just him and her and the silence, the late morning sunlight shining down on them.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here is another chapter.
> 
> We are so close to the end now.
> 
> Thank you all for your support. It means the world to me.

Morning midnight and winter twilight. Time ebbs and flows and then, just like that, it ends.

She leaves without ceremony.

He walks two steps behind her as he carries her bag out to her car, watches the pristine snow catch in her hair and melt on her skin.

She’s everything and the fact that she’s leaving makes him want to fall to the ground and weep. 

Understanding this is one thing, living the reality is quite another.

She kisses him goodbye. She’s soft and slow and her hands flutter a little on his arms as he lingers, tries to draw the moment out as long as he can.

"Trust me," she says, through a watery, rueful smile. "Trust us."

He takes her hand - it feels small and strong in his - and he kisses her knuckles one by one. 

She’s asking far too much and she knows it. There are some things even she shouldn’t demand of him. Some things even he can’t give.

"I don't want to."

It feels petulant - childish even - exactly like it did the last time he said it in that hospital where he broke her heart and then broke it again.

He’s been so cruel. He’s the worst man in the world and he deserves this. He doesn’t expect mercy but he wants it anyway.

_ Stay, please. _

She runs her teeth over her bottom lip. "You're doing a lot of things now you said you didn't want to do."

As always, she’s right. But it doesn't stop him from wanting to keep her here, kiss her a little longer, let her send him spinning and spiralling - do the same for her.

Mostly though he just wants her. Her smile, her laugh, that keen look in her eyes when she's knows more than he does, that place in her heart he thought was his.

_ Love somebody else instead of another war. _

Love them and let them rip you apart.

It's her. It's all her.

Hand through his hair and she rests her forehead on his, swaying, taking deep breaths like she's trying to draw his very essence inside of her and hold it there.

And he's weak, and it doesn't matter. 

"Stay, please. Please stay with me, Karen. It doesn’t have to be like this."

It’s futile. He knew this even before he said it and yet he knows it’s right that he’s the one begging, that he’s the one left behind, alone, with nothing to do but wait and wonder and pine.

He doesn’t give any mercy, so he’s not entitled to any either.

She blinks tears out of her eyes, tilts his head so she can kiss his temple, and then steps back, arms at her sides.

“Yes, it does.”

And there’s nothing left. She slides behind the steering wheel, turns on the ignition, and then she's gone, and so is his whole heart.

~~~

_ Do what you always do. _

He goes back to the room, packs his stuff up. 

She's everywhere - the scent of her on the sheets, a strand of her hair on the pillow, a lipstick stain on the coffee cup.

Mostly though, she's on him, inside him. She’s in every thought, every desire.

He doesn’t need to wonder if this is how she felt all those times he ran away from her: the night he murdered Ray Schoonover, that night on the roof when he watched Red cry over Elektra, the elevator where he saved her life and she saved his, that moment in the hospital when he lied through his teeth and told her he didn't want to love her, and then the night after the church when he took it back and told her he did. 

He hasn't been good… but he's trying to be better.

_ Do what you always do. _

Hurt. Punish. Destroy.

It seems empty now.

_ All the parts of it. _

_ Judge. Executioner. Punisher. Killer. _

Except…

Except there's one thing he's done through all of that and even though he didn't know it, it kept him going.

It'll keep him going now too.

He picks up his bag, checks out at reception, and heads to his truck. 

He's halfway into town when he realises the flat black box that held a filigree bracelet and all of his failures wasn't there after she left.

~~~

“Darlin' I can't stop the rain  
Or turn your black sky blue  
But let me show you what love can do   
Let me show you what love can do.”

_ He's half humming, half singing softly in her ear as they sway in her kitchen, bare feet on cold tiles, warm hands on the smooth satin of her nightgown. _

“Let me show you what love can do.”

It can keep you going, _she thinks as_ _he pulls her close, nose in her hair, breath tickling her neck. _That’s all it needs to do.

_ They kept their promises. He held on and didn’t let go, and she didn’t make him a liar. _

_ His movements are smooth and effortless and she lets him lead as much as he can with this strange sly shuffle they're doing in her small kitchen. _

_ He dances well. He sings well too, and she'd bet that he can play that old guitar she's seen at his place that he "liberated" from David when he moved out of the basement. _

“Let me show you what love can do.”

_ "How long have you loved me?" _

_ He stops singing and there's a rumble in his chest but he doesn't laugh. _

_ It’s not funny after all. Nothing about this is funny. _

_ "I don’t know. Can’t pinpoint a time when I think back. I think I just knew. But it was like it didn’t matter that I loved you. I couldn't let it matter." _

_ She nuzzles his neck. _

_ "Matters now." _

_ "It's always mattered. Always." _

_ Kisses across his collarbones, hands in his hair. _

“Darling we can't stop this train  
When it comes crashing through   
But let me show you what love can do  
Let me show you what love can do.”

_ There's potatoes roasting in the oven and two steaks waiting to go on the grill. There's no turkey or cranberry sauce, no fruit puddings or eggnog. _

_ But it's still Christmas, and as he spins her around, she knows it'll be one of the best she's ever had. _

~~~

Kevin's grave looks different when it isn't covered in ash and soot. It looks different when Karen's not in front of it trying to freeze herself to death.

It's simple - just smooth grey stone and it still seems small for something so big. But there's something almost serene about it too as he stands there, the snow falling gently around him. 

He won't pretend to know what exact place it occupies in her heart anymore, or if she's allowing some of the good memories to take the place of the bad, but it doesn't feel like an obstacle now. It doesn’t feel like it needs to be overcome.

It is missing something though.

The snow soaks through his jeans when he kneels.

He feels like he should say something, but Kevin isn't his to speak to, and even if he was he wouldn't know where to begin.

Instead he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a flat bronze rectangle, turns it over so that the sunlight glints off its shiny surface.

He's amazed that he could find a key cutter able to do same day engravings in Fagan Corners, but he guesses this godawful town has a lot if you look hard enough.

He did, after all, find everything he ever wanted in it.

The plaque is simple, the writing plain and bold.

**BROTHER**

He doesn't know how long it'll stay here before it gets lost or stolen, but that in itself doesn't matter. He presses it into the ground, digging it into the soil, so that the metal is flush with the stone.

When the snow melts it'll be visible, it'll still be here - a testament to who Kevin was and what he meant to the sister he died for.

Karen might never know - Frank's not sure if he'll tell her about this and he doubts she'll be eager to return here any time soon - but it'll mean something. 

And that's all she's ever wanted.

He touches the stone. It's cold and hard and it has as little for him as he does for it. This isn't his burden, it's not his punishment, and, for once, he doesn't need to atone.

Still, he lowers his head, concentrates on this boy who never became a man - thinks of another boy who never became a man with dark hair and eyes so like his own - and then, as the snow starts to fall heavily, he stands, knees cracking and joints already aching.

It's enough. He doesn't need to linger. It's done and now all that's left is her.

He turns, pulls up the hood of his coat and shoves his hands in his pockets. He has things to do - things he's always done - and he has her waiting at the end of it, even if he doesn't quite know how yet.

Head down, he makes his way back to his truck, boots crunching on hard snow and ice, and flakes catching on his eyelashes as he passes people under umbrellas picking their way through the headstones searching for that one last goodbye.

He knows about last goodbyes. They're never enough. Except when they are.

In the parking lot, he takes a deep breath, lets the air fill him up. It feels clean and sharp and the cold burns his lungs. It's so different from the first time he stood here when everything was thick with smoke and his heart was heavy - and the only thing he wanted was grey and cold as the gravestones and so desperate to push him away, she actually thought she could. 

_ (‘I’m never letting you go again’) _

He looks up and the sky is a wonderfully dramatic shade of silver blue, frosted with white clouds. It's almost beautiful - almost inviting, and a hint of melancholy settles in his belly that she isn’t here to see this. 

Maybe it’s for the best though. Maybe she’s taken what she needs. He doesn't think they'll be visiting this godforsaken town again, no matter what kind of a show it puts on. 

The time for these kinds of falsehoods is over.

_ Go home Frank, that's where your life is now _.

He's almost at his truck when he realises someone is calling him, voice surprised and insistent, maybe even a little desperate.

"Pete? Pete is that you?"

He stops in his tracks, catches himself in mid sigh. Deep in his bones where all his fundamental truths live, he knew it had to happen. Fagan Corners wasn't going to let them leave without its own final goodbye. And he'll take this one if it means sparing her.

_ Punishment. Forgiveness. Second chances. _

He squares his shoulders and turns slowly. 

Paxton Page is bundled into a faded puffer jacket. There’s a brown scarf around his neck, one side of it hanging much longer than the other and flapping in the wind. He isn't wearing a hat and the tips of his ears are bright red. Even out here in the clean air and the radiant sky, that black cloud of interminable sadness seems to follow him, hanging over his head like a raincloud.

Despite this he smiles tightly.

"Almost didn't recognise you without the…" he sweeps his thumb and forefinger along his chin. "Makes you look real different."

"Yeah," Frank says. "Needed a change."

"Go to the barber near the liquor store? Rufus is pretty good. Known him for years now."

"No."

Paxton nods, looks him up and down. He's nervous, awkward, fiddling with his cuff where some of the faux fur trim of his coat has started to peel away from the lining.

It’s not exactly uncomfortable - doesn’t have the same atmosphere as their last encounter at _ Big Tony’s _ did - but it isn’t pleasant, and as Frank watches him shift from side to side, the silence stretches as thin and frayed as Paxton's clothes.

_ Go on, _ he thinks. _ Ask me. _

Except Paxton doesn't. Not quite.

"Surprised you're still here. Been what? 10 days? Two weeks even?"

Frank shrugs. "Kind of lost track of the time."

_ Twilight mornings. Midnight in the afternoon. Hair the colour of summer sunlight falling through his fingers _.

"Staying on then?"

Frank shakes his head. "Heading out now. Back to Hell's Kitchen."

"Hell’s Kitchen…” Paxton offers another rueful smile which doesn't reach his eyes. “Our little corner of heaven didn't grow on you then?" 

"No, can't say it did."

"Pity." Paxton swallows and nods, glances at the graveyard and then at the ground. "Hate to say it but you’re missing out.”

“Maybe.”

Paxton shifts nervously again. “Well, safe travels. Be careful of the ice on the roads. It gets really bad after it has melted and frozen again." 

"Thanks." 

Frank stares at him for a few long seconds, waiting. 

_ Go on old man, ask me. She's your goddamn daughter. That has to count for something. _

But Paxton is quiet and the snow is heavy and Hell's Kitchen, and all the angels and demons inside it are calling to him, so he nods once and turns back to his truck. 

This isn't a big deal. He doesn't owe this man anything, and that includes concern for choices he's made and continues to make. He can go home. He can punish. He can love. He can _ be better _, and sad old men in sad old bars can go back to their sad old lives.

_ Do what you always do. _

But just as he’s reaching into his pocket for his keys, Paxton calls him again, voice cracking and that hint of desperation now sitting heavy in his throat and choking the words.

"Pete, can I ask you something?"

"Yeah?" He turns again, icy wind hitting him full in the face.

_ Come on, old man. Come on. _

Paxton clears his throat. "Did you find her? I… ah… I kept an eye out, but…"

_ You couldn't pick up the phone… _

He trails off, pushes his shaking hands into his pockets, presses his quivering lips into a firm line. And, even though Frank has a lot of opinions on Paxton's role in everything that happened, somehow this hint of fatherly concern feels so much worse than if Paxton just hated her, if he'd just cut ties, not caring whether she lived or died. 

There's a part of him that wants to just leave the old man hanging, force him to face up to the consequences of his actions the way she faced up to hers. But the truth is, even The Punisher isn't that cruel.

It's always the love that hurts the most, and he _ isn't _made of stone.

Frank sighs. "Yeah. Yeah I found her."

"Is she alright?"

He asks the question too quickly, but it doesn't tell Frank anything he didn't already know. The desperation is so real, so tangible, that Frank almost feels sorry for him.

"She's alright."

There's a long moment when neither of them say anything. There's just cold snow and icy wind and then Paxton bobs his head.

"She still here?"

"No, she's gone home."

He doesn't miss the frown that slides over Paxton's face when he says "home".

"Alone?"

"For now."

"You… you gonna see her again?"

_ May as well die right here if I don't. _

"Yeah, I'll see her again."

That much at least is certain. No matter what happens the universe has a way of throwing them back together, whether they want it or not.

Paxton shifts from side to side and the silence stretches long again. 

"It's good…" he starts and then seemingly takes a moment to collect his thoughts. "Not many people would do what you did - coming looking for her if they thought something was wrong--”

“You’d be surprised. She means a lot to a lot of people. Just because you find that hard to believe don't mean it ain't true.”

Paxton frowns but doesn’t rise to the barb. “Well, it's good that she has someone like you looking out for her. You’re... you're decent."

"She looks out for me too."

The snow starts coming down in clumps, thick flurries that swirl around them briefly before collapsing into fat white pillows on the ground and in the distance the wind howls. He wonders if another storm is coming and all this prettiness really was just a facade and the ugliness will seep back in the minute he turns his back.

Frank purses his lips, glances around the parking lot. "Well, I've got a long drive ahead of me…" 

He bows his head and turns back to his truck.

"Wait!" Paxton takes a step towards him and then stops as if he's forgotten himself. "Can… can you give her a message for me?"

He freezes, one foot already on the door frame.

_ Can he? _

Can he do that to the woman he loves? Can he put the ball back in her court and leave her to be the one to go grovelling back to a situation where she's the only one bearing her soul? Can he give her this thing which is more of a poisoned chalice than a gift and leave her to spiral with it again?

_ (“Are you letting him go?” _

_ “I have to”) _

He looks at Paxton over his shoulder.

"Give it to her yourself if it’s so important," he says evenly.

_ Come on, just be better. _

"Please…"

He sighs, closes his eyes briefly before turning around.

"Sir, with all due respect," he says evenly as a strange sort of purposeful calmness descends on him. "I'm done breaking Karen’s heart. That ain't what I'm here for."

He doesn’t miss the way Paxton gasps at the mention of her name, nor the panic in his eyes. It makes no difference though - the cage Paxton has trapped himself in is inconsequential when compared to Karen’s wellbeing.

"Pete…"

Frank shakes his head and climbs into his truck, closes the door and rolls down the window.

_ He _ can be better, even if no one else can.

He takes another deep breath of that Fagan Corners air, and then turns his attention back to the old man who lost so much and keeps on losing. He looks very small and very alone and again Frank almost feels sorry for him. He knows what it's like. More than anything he _ knows _.

"Goodbye Mr Page. I don't think I'll see you again."

"Please Pete."

"You take care now."

He turns the key in the ignition and the truck rumbles to life and then he leaves Paxton Page and the graveyard and Fagan Corners behind him.

~~~

_ Trust me. Trust us. _

Despite himself he finds as he's driving back along that long lonely highway, he does.

He trusts her more than anyone he knows.

She took the box. She _ made _ the time right, and even if he doesn't have faith in God anymore, he has faith in her.

Now all he has to do is keep it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course the song Frank is singing/humming is "What Love Can Do" by Bruce Springsteen.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I think this is the second last chapter - I think. We know how bad I am at predicting this.
> 
> Thank you all so much for your support - it means the world to me.
> 
> Please let me know what you think.

Time moves differently in Hell's Kitchen too. 

It’s also slow and nonsensical, but that's where the comparisons to Fagan Corners end. Rather than being languid and gentle, it’s stifling and oppressive and it doesn't have any insulation from reality. If anything, the reality back in the city is sickeningly present - all its ugliness out in the open for the world to see - and he can't hide from it.

Without her, the hours feel like days and the days feel like months. The nights are the worst and waking up cold and lonely quickly becomes a despised but normal part of his life.

Much like a dog without an owner, he pines for some kind of stability, some kind of direction. And every second is one he spends hoping for the phone to ring, hoping for a gentle knock on his door, flash of blonde hair in a coffee shop or the click of heels on the tiles in the hall outside his apartment.

It doesn't come though, and he goes to bed every night telling himself that tomorrow is a new day and the possibilities are endless.

He believes it too. His faith doesn't waver. She made a promise, and she doesn't break her promises.

She doesn't lie.

Others are less convinced though.

"I'm so fucking sorry," Curt says a few days after he's back, while they're sitting in a downtown diner.

Frank looks up from the eggs he's shovelling into his mouth.

"Sorry for what?"

Curt shrugs. "Just thought you and Karen were gonna make it, you know? Thought you were a sure thing. Hoped it was… "

"Why ain't we gonna make it?"

"Come on Frank, she pulled the 'it's not you, it's me' card."

Frank frowns. "Nah, that ain't what she did."

He calls the waitress over to top up their coffee - she's attractive with a full sleeve tattoo up her left arm and dark hair piled high on her head. Her name tag says "Lia".

She smiles prettily, lips a perfect bright red rosebud, and makes a point to touch his shoulder when he asks for the bill.

Curt raises his eyebrows and Frank shakes his head.

"Don't start."

"Buddy, look, I like Karen. She's great, and I know you wouldn't be here without her. So I mean, actually she owes me a fucking huge apology for that… because this wasn't how I saw my Wednesday mornings…"

Frank rolls his eyes and swallows a mouthful of coffee.

"I could be with Dinah, but instead I gotta babysit some overdramatic asshole…"

"Okay okay, you've made your point."

Curt smiles, but then his eyes soften and he gives Frank a sympathetic look which Frank decides would be much better with a fist planted in the middle of it.

"Seriously, I'm grateful to her. Fact is it's better having you around them not."

“Thanks.” he snaps. “Good to know.”

Curt ignores his sarcasm. "Look, sometimes I forget that there's only ever been Maria for you… you were what? 19? 20? Anything on either side of that would have been copping feels behind the bleachers-"

"Jesus Christ, Curt-"

"Or one night-stands…"

"Oh for fuck's sake, can we talk about something else?"

The waitress comes back. She lingers a little, asking about their breakfast before handing him the check and winking at him over her shoulder as she walks away, a pronounced sway to her hips.

To neither his nor Curt's surprise, she's left her name - a little heart dotting the "i" - and number on the back. A scrawled note says "Call me".

Curt shakes his head again. "See what I mean? I'm just saying that maybe you've been out of this dating game too long."

"This ain’t ‘dating’ - it ain't a game either."

"No," Curt concedes. "But you haven't had to worry about this kinda shit in what? 17 years? You had Maria and you knew her, you didn't need to worry about anything else. But now… it's a fucking war zone out there…"

"It a war zone with Dinah too?"

Curt puts up his hands. "Hey now, that's different."

Frank takes his time putting his knife and fork together and wipes his fingers on a serviette. He tosses some dollars on the table, pointedly leaves the check and its scrawled note under the salt shaker, and when he’s done, he looks Curt dead in the eye.

"So is this."

He can see Curt doesn't believe him. He's more than okay with that. He doesn't need anyone to believe except her and himself. 

~~~

He gets similar pity from David who only seems slightly more worried about hurting his feelings. He asks questions, makes what Frank imagines David thinks are suitably sympathetic noises, but ultimately he also seems ready to jump into commiseration mode, even going as far as to pull a bottle of scotch off the top shelf before Frank tells him to put it back.

"I just thought-"

"That I needed to see your drunk dancing again? Yeah, ain't no one needing to see that."

David sighs, puts the scotch back..

"I just want you to be okay."

"I am okay."

"Some people - you just don't get them out of your system…"

"You think I don't know that?"

David shakes his head. "No, I know you do. I just hoped you wouldn't lose anyone else."

"I ain't lost anyone else David. You don't know her."

"Frank, I-"

"No, you don't. You don't know what it was like in Vermont... what we were like. You don't know…" 

God, if they could only see, if they could only understand.

But David puts up his hands placatingly. "Okay. Okay. You're right. I don't know."

"No. You don't."

They leave it at that, but the air feels heavy and oppressive with pity and he leaves as soon as he can.

It's okay.

He has a promise and she has the bracelet. They don't need anything more than that.

It's enough.

It was always enough.

~~~

The days drag on, one plodding after the other in what seems like the slowest passing of time he's ever experienced. Christmas never seems like it's any less than a month away no matter how many nights pass, no matter how many decorations and flashing lights adorn Hell's Kitchen.

She doesn't call. She doesn't text. And it takes everything in his power not to just do it himself. But he tries not to break his promises no matter how hard they are to keep.

He does drive past their offices, sees Nelson and Murdock standing out on the sidewalk trying to hail a cab. Nelson is calling to someone lingering just inside the entrance of the building. They're nothing more than a shadow but Frank knows it's her.

He wants to stop, but he doesn't, and, as he approaches, Red turns in his direction and his expression changes to something almost sympathetic, almost resigned.

There’s no way Red could know he’s near, but he and his cartoon superhero senses can go fuck themselves anyway.

The cab arrives and Murdock slides inside, Nelson gesticulating wildly to the person in the building, pointing at the cab and holding the door open.

If Frank waited a second longer, he'd see her. He knows he would, but instead he hits the accelerator and passes the cab, turns back into main street traffic.

He tells himself he won't drive past there again.

He tells himself a lot of things.

~~~

_ “Do what you always do.” _

It sounds so simple, so straightforward. So incredibly _ right _ . Returning to old habits - old _ causes _ \- should be as easy falling down.

_ Should _ be.

Here's the thing though: he doesn't want to.

Not that he doesn't have the fire raging in his bones, or the voices screaming in his head to punish and destroy - they’re there and sometimes they're louder than ever. But he has something else now, something he didn't have before. Something precious and delicate that he could lose in a heartbeat and it makes life worth living in the way that drowning the world in blood never could.

This feeling isn’t new or even unexpected. He’s always known who and what he is - Maria knew it too, and while he knows how incredibly unfair it was to use her and the kids as some kind of moral compass to see him through and ultimately save him from his own dark desires, he did it anyway. Maybe the kids didn’t know. Maria sure as fuck did.

And so does Karen. 

And it’s not right, not _ decent _, but it is what it is, and that sense of self-preservation - so long ignored - comes back with an intensity he's not sure he ever felt before.

The fact is he doesn't want to die to a stray bullet, to a trigger happy tweaker or a mobster with a submachine gun he doesn't know how to use. He doesn't want to end up floating with the ice on the surface of the Hudson, his throat slit and his blood mixing with the dirty water.

Even more than that he doesn't want to end up rotting in a jail cell, knowing he could have had everything and he and Karen are being separated by a few steel bars and a couple of feet of concrete.

What he does want - and it really is the only thing he wants - is to be with her. He wants to keep her safe. He doesn't want to cut his life short when he's standing here on the precipice of so many possibilities.

All those reasons he pushed her away before have turned out to be exactly what he was afraid they would be. 

And he doesn't want to change it.

Still...

Still, there's that sense of righteousness and nobility that keeps him going, that old and defining idea that it's a dirty job but someone has to do it… 

_ Put them down, so they don't get up again. _

He guesses on some level he owes that much, although he can't really decide who is doing the collecting.

So he goes out. He hunts. He takes out the upper echelons of a flesh trafficking ring and guns down a couple of assholes making a living out of fighting dogs.

He castrates and eventually kills a serial rapist and blows up animal feed warehouse that's actually a front for meth production. He puts two abusive husbands down and dumps their bodies in the woods for the crows.

And then he goes home and washes the blood off his hands and sits alone in his apartment and misses her.

If it was any other job, his bosses would say his heart isn't in it. 

They'd be right.

His heart is with her. Nothing else even comes close.

It doesn’t change the fact that he does a better job than most. He's efficient and smooth and the city is cleaner than it was before. 

Safer.

If nothing else he can do that.

He can make it better.

~~~

_ It's late afternoon when they head out. The snow is falling thick and white and it's covering the city in a fluffy white blanket. _

_ Her hand is tight in his and she squeezes his fingers. "I'm never letting you go." _

_ For a second it seems he doesn't know what to with the words. His hand twitches around hers and his spine stiffens, and then all at once the tension seems to ebb out of him in a long shiver. _

_ "Gonna hold you to that." He’s trying to sound flippant, but his voice rumbles and cracks and she pulls him close, brushes her lips on his neck, just below his ear. _

_ "You better." _

_ His breathing is ragged and heavy, puffs of white air coming out of his mouth and disappearing into the frigid mist. _

_ She doesn't need to wonder what it feels like to belong after all this time, to find that feeling you thought you'd never get back. She's not sure she had it since her mother died and the world fell apart. And every step she took afterwards just seemed to make it worse, make the idea of a home more and more remote. _

_ And yet now, walking through the snow with him on her arm, his presence so incredibly demanding and real, it feels like something integral to living and breathing and being. _

_ It might be a bit different for him. He's always come from a better place than her. A decent upper middle class family, a church that shaped him, a beautiful wife and two wonderful children, a career where bonds run bone deep. _

_ And then he lost it all, almost all at the same time. _

_ She wonders how much difference that makes, she wonders about the difference between losing everything and never really having it at all. _

_ Her guess is that for them it doesn't matter. _

_ "Penny for your thoughts?" She asks and he grins. _

_ "Just thinking about something Curt said." _

_ "What did he say?" _

_ "I'll tell you later." _

_ And she wants to press but his smile is wicked and something tells her it'll be better if she lets him take his time. _

_ "Okay," she says. "Let's go." _

_ He kisses her hand and they head off into the city. _

~~~

Sunday.

The bells are ringing. 

He lifts his head, nostrils flaring and the kiddie fiddler he's got strung up in a warehouse on the corner of second and main, whimpers softly.

The smell of blood and piss hangs heavy in the air and the whole world is equally heavy on his shoulders but for a second he doesn't notice any of it. 

There's only the bells, their sound rich and inviting, calling to him, promising salvation, promising something else too, and it feels like every cell in his body answers.

Behind him the blubbering eases.

"You… you a church man?" The man's voice is weak, trembling, but the hint of hope in it is too powerful to ignore. "I'm one too. Never missed a Sunday. Should have gone more often…"

"Shut the fuck up."

"I messed up, but I can make it right… I can… forgiveness and-"

His words fade away under the sound, lost in a litany of other lies. 

And for a moment all Frank can think about is her and that first time up in the gallery, her hand in his, tears on her face, head resting on his shoulder. And then the words that came after.

_ I love you and it means everything. _

"Forgive them for they know not what they do…"

Frank turns.

"Except they do. _ You _ do."

His blade is sharp and it slices through flesh easily. There's a nasty bubbling gasp and wave of blood gushes onto the dirty cement floor and then it's over.

Some people can't be better.

~~~

He doesn't go to the church that night, but every step he takes away from it and the sound of bells feels like he's wading through mud which is trying to consume him and drag him under.

~~~

He finds himself thinking about Maria a lot. Not that she's ever really out of his thoughts. Not that she's ever really gone. 

But she's been quiet for a while now, not even really that much of a presence in Fagan Corners, not sitting there on the edges, just out of reach. He likes to think she's taking a step back to let him sort his head out. 

She always knew when to leave him to his demons and wait there on the other side for the time he would need her to chase them away.

And she did. She always did. 

Except this isn't a demon and he doesn't want it chased away. 

He hopes she understands that. He hopes she can forgive him too. And God knows, there are so many things he needs forgiven.

But regardless of whether she’s bringing punishment or absolution, she's back. On the edges. The periphery. Waiting for him to do something. Waiting for him to need her.

It makes him think about how different this thing is he has with Karen. Not better, not worse. Just different. He guesses he’s not the same person he was when Maria was alive and even though it breaks his heart to acknowledge it, he knows Maria Castle and the man he is now would never have made it - not in a million years and no matter how hard they tried. 

Karen is something else entirely. Her darkness so much more like his, her pain so tangible he sees himself in it. She loves The Punisher as much as she loves him and that makes it complicated. Not insurmountable, but so much more complicated than finding the love of his life sitting under a tree with her friends and trying to impress her with a murdered song.

He doesn't need to be a genius to know that finding her the same way he lost Maria, in a hail of bullets, to the sound of a machine keeping him alive, to the searing pain of cold metal in his brain, set the tone for what they would be.

It’s fitting. Like it's made the perfect circle and they're right there in the middle… Maria on the edges, blood on her pretty dress.

He also knows he's opened himself up to another world of hurt. Not just by virtue of the fact that Karen might come to her senses and break his heart, but just that he could lose her too. There could be more bullets he can't stop, there could be another click of a hammer he ignores, another Lewis with a bomb, another Billy Russo to destroy his life, another Fisk trying to get revenge.

He could fail, and he doesn't know if he could live with that guilt. After all, he's barely living with the guilt he already has.

"I'm sorry, Maria," he whispers to the empty room. "I'm sorry."

~~~

He spirals.

The church, her office, her apartment, the Brooklyn bridge.

He drives out to the bakery where he kissed her for the first time - along the road he nearly lost her - and orders coffee.

The waitress is the same one he and Karen had before and she doesn't flirt with him. But in her expression he thinks he sees the same thing he saw in Curt's eyes, and he wonders if she remembers him from when he wasn't alone and there was light in his world.

He doesn't linger but when he gets back into the city he swings by the brownstone where they dropped Ella and the baby off. The lights are on and someone is home and briefly he considers just getting out and knocking on the door, asking if everything is okay, but even though he knows he has enough charm and good grace to pull it off, he doesn't.

It cuts too close to home and the thought just leaves him cut off and alone.

_ (We're all just fighting not to be alone) _

He spirals.

~~~

"You ain't heard nothing?"

It feels like it's been weeks since their last conversation, but he knows if he looks at the calendar it'll only be days.

He shakes his head and Curt sighs.

They're at Dinah's place, drinking beer and eating pizza. He's sitting alone on the couch and Dinah and Curt are on the loveseat, her legs draped over his lap. She's not paying much attention to either of them, instead typing furiously on her phone, having a disagreement with her mother about some distant aunt's fourth marriage in as many years.

"Just giving her time."

"Yeah, but how much?"

He shrugs. That's a question he can't answer, seeing as time itself seems to have it out for him and he can't get a handle on it no matter how hard he tries.

"Leave it. Please."

"Buddy, you know I want this to work out for you. You _ know _ that."

Yeah, he does. Curt has always wanted the best for him.

He takes another swig of beer and Dinah's phone beeps. She glares at it and then rolls her eyes.

"But if you ain't gonna go get her, then I don't know what to say…"

"Maybe she's gonna come get me. You ever think of that?"

Curt smirks. "Let's keep this based in the real world. She's got eyes and you ain't all that."

"Fuck you Curt."

He says it goodnaturedly, trying to keep his smile easy and his scowl hidden, but the truth is that Curt isn't wrong. He _ isn't _ all that, he isn't what he needs to be to be worthy of her. He's _ better _ but he's a long way off from being _ good _. The problem is, such as it may be, that just seems to make her want him more.

Seems….

_ Seemed. _

"Oh for the love of…" Dinah shakes her head at her phone, dark curls falling over her shoulders, "Mom, what are you even talking about…"

She shifts on the loveseat and Curt covers her feet with his hand and grins but his eyes are serious when he turns back to Frank.

"I just don't want you to lose out because you waited too long… now that things are finally on track for you, now that you've actually got it through your thick skull that people care and you can't push them away and expect them to go, it would be a fucking crime to let this slip away."

This is also true. It would be one of the biggest regrets of his life to have this fall apart. But she made a promise that she'd come back, and he doesn't want to force it. He doesn't want to take that away from her. She gets to decide, because when he decides he sends her away and breaks her heart. He hurts her and he hurts himself and he's made a promise he'll never do that again.

Dinah groans dramatically.

"Damnit mom, she's a grown ass woman, how many times do we need to go over this?" she says under her breath and types angrily away on her phone.

Curt smirks, runs a hand up her calf, and Frank takes another bite of pizza.

"Curt, I get it okay. I get what you're saying and you know what, thanks, I appreciate the concern, but you didn't see what happened in Fagan-"

"Yeah, thank God," Curt teases and Frank rolls his eyes. "Nobody wants to see your naked ass."

"That's not what I meant."

"Yeah yeah," Curt waves his hand dismissively. "You wanna share what you do mean though? What it is that happened that gives you this confidence someone with your ears shouldn't have."

Dinah doesn't look up from her phone but she kicks Curt's thigh sharply enough that he sucks in a hard breath.

Frank cocks an eyebrow and purses his lips.

"Fine," Curt scowls. "But she must have done a number on you."

"So what if she did?"

It's easier to just agree at this point. The fact is that he can't say what it is he does mean. Karen trusted him with all her secrets. She showed him everything she did and asked him to hold it for her and help her bear it. And he won't betray that, even if it means listening to Curt impart this so-called wisdom.

"Okay, okay." Curt downs the last of his beer. "I guess I just don't understand, but you do and that's what counts. You know her and if you think this is the right thing to do, then it is." He purses his lips. "Maybe I'm just disappointed you ain't gonna go get her at her work in front of Nelson and Murdock, _ Officer and a Gentleman _ style…"

Frank snorts. 

"You want me to put on my dress blues and sweep her off her feet?"

"Yeah, come on. It ain't a terrible idea and you know it. You all shiny and smart, 'Up Where We Belong' playing in the background. 

"Hell, I'll bring the goddamn boombox."

He laughs, some of the tension easing out of his shoulders as he feels this line of conversation winding down.

Curt grins. "And I guess if nothing else, you can always get that waitress' number again. In fact … I might have it somewhere-"

"Oh for Christ's sake," Frank scowls as his recently won good humour dissolves and Curt scrounges around in his jeans pockets, eventually pulling out a piece of crumpled blue paper that may or may not be the bill in question. "Throw that away."

Curt shakes his head, but as he's straightening it out, Dinah seemingly so engrossed in her conversation with her mother, suddenly springs to life, dumping her phone on the coffee table and snatching the paper away from him.

"No one is asking any waitresses out, Curtis" she says, voice firm as it was the first time she interrogated him, eyes like lasers. "Leave them alone. If they need this time, let them have it-"

"Dinah, I'm just-"

"No you're not anything. I know Karen, and I know how much she cares about that sad sack of rage sitting on my couch. Screwed my whole investigation over when I underestimated it. 

"They'll be okay. Stop sticking your nose where it doesn't belong."

She fixes Curt with a glare and Frank feels a hint of satisfaction when he sees him flinch.

“And you,” she says turning her attention to him. “You screw this up and I’ll kill you myself. “No exceptions.”

And then she tears the paper into little pieces and goes back to arguing with her mother.

~~~

  
  


He pretends things are easier than they are. It's easy to laugh at Curt's teasing and roll his eyes at David. It's easy to believe her and trust that she'll come to him when she's ready.

But the loneliness isn't easy. Those times when there's no one to kill and no one to punish and no one to love; when the city is quiet and he's alone with his thoughts and his feelings with only Maria's ghost for company, and everything feels so big and so real it's like he's splitting right down the middle. 

He misses Karen so much it feels like there's a part of him which is just gone. And there's no end in sight.

He resists the call of the church once more, telling himself it's pointless and they've left that behind them. They made their own absolution, they paid their own penance and St Jude's was just a balm at best, a symbol at worst. It's not part of them and they're not part of it.

He tells himself a lot of things.

~~~

_ The city looks different somehow. Cleaner. Brighter. More alive, even though it’s Christmas and emptier than usual. _

_ They go to the Brooklyn bridge and he kisses her at the water’s edge. Properly. No soft, chaste pecks on the cheek which leave her taste lingering on his lips. His mouth covers hers, licking up her sweetness, devouring her the same way he did when they were in Fagan Corners. It makes her want to take him back to the apartment, let him rip her clothes off and lose himself in her. _

_ But there are things to do. Things to see. Things he needs to trust her with. _

_ They walk past her old apartment building where he tackled her to the floor and saved her from the Blacksmith's bullets, and he lifts her into his arms and swings her around so that she's laughing and shaking. _

_ At the diner where he murdered two men in front of her he tells her he's sorry and she tells him she forgives him, and then he holds her for a very long time. _

_ Outside the hospital he promises to never lie to her again. He promises her she has his whole heart, forever, for as long as she wants it. And she cradles his face in her hands and tells her she'll look after it. _

~~~

Sunday again. Sunday and Christmas is still a month away and he doesn't know how this is happening.

When he looks at the calendar it makes sense and he can plot the timetable that led to this point, the days follow as they're supposed to and everything adds up neatly to tell him that time is moving as it should and he hasn't lost or gained any days. 

And yet… 

And yet it feels wrong. It feels like Fagan Corners was decades ago and he's been stuck in some kind of awful time loop where nothing moves forward and he's just going through the motions; like someone needs to kickstart the Earth spinning on its axis again and remind it that it circles the sun and not the other way around.

He's really not one for believing in fate or cosmic forces. Maybe he did once when he had a wife that loved him more than he deserved, when he had children that made his heart overflow, but not anymore. Too much has happened, too much blood has been spilled and even if it seems like Karen Page is a gift from the stars themselves, he's not arrogant enough to believe the universe rearranged itself for him, while the rest of the world goes to hell in a handbasket. But he can't shake the feeling that the universe is waiting, holding its breath, trying to stop itself from jumping up and down with anticipation before everything clicks into place.

He just wishes it would get the hell on with it.

He heads out into the cold, following the sound of the bells.

~~~

She's not there.

It's not really a surprise. After all, he himself thought their time at the church was over, that it served its purpose. There's almost no chance she didn't come to that conclusion before him.

But he sits in the cold gallery, staring at the pieta - grey stone locked in time, lights shining down harshly and catching the dustmotes so they look like snow.

The priest drones on - he's not sure about what because he hasn't bothered to listen. Instead despite himself, he waits for the click of heels on the wooden stairs, the smell of her perfume, that almost tangible change in the air when she's around.

As expected he finds none of those things, and it's colder than it should be when he walks home.

~~~

There's another service on Wednesdays. It's really more of a bible study and fellowship meeting. The priest doesn't stand in the pulpit, preferring to have the few parishioners congregate with him in the first few rows of pews. He sits at the front and they talk. It reminds him of a support group with some Catholic guilt added in for good measure, and Frank can barely hear them as he bundles further into his coat in the drafty balcony.

It doesn't matter. It's not the reason he's here.

Unfortunately that reason isn't here either and he slips out through the back and into the night, full moon hanging like a skull in the sky.

~~~

_ The hotel is open again after Lewis' attack, the renovations finished. It looks as good as new but there's a gloominess to it which she doesn't think it'll ever lose. Even the cheerful Christmas trees at the entrance do nothing to change that _

_ His hand tightens on hers and she knows he's remembering everything. Losing her, finding her, losing her again. _

_ She takes his head in her hands, presses her forehead to his. _

_ "It's okay," she says. "It's over now." _

_ He doesn't say anything, but his lips meet hers soft and slow. _

_ "No," he says when he pulls away, looks down at the ground. "It's just the beginning." _

~~~

_ Punishment. _

The graveyard is empty and it feels as dead as it is - Maria’s headstone, the marble angel watching him with her wings outstretched.

"I'm sorry, I should have saved you."

_ Forgiveness. _

He wonders just how dangerous the second chances are.

~~~

More bloodshed, more mobsters and rapists put down, a paedophile curb stomped and found lying in his own waste on the bank of the river, carrion birds feeding on his eyes.

He reads the newspaper, stupidly looking for Karen's byline, even though he knows she's hardly going to be doing the normal crime beat she always did. No, he's only going to see her name when there are exposés to be written, when she's blown some conspiracy wide open and that asshole ex-boss of hers is begging her for first dibs.

Still, he keeps up with the coverage of his crimes and isn't surprised to find that he's never considered a suspect. In fact neither his name, nor that of The Punisher is even mentioned, and he knows in his bones that's not just some luck the universe is bestowing on him. That it's Mahoney turning the blindest of blind eyes, letting him "help" rather than hinder. 

He wonders just how much Karen and Dinah had to do with that. How they've essentially given him a licence to kill. 

That's some James Bond level bullshit right there, if James Bond was beaten and broken and more dead than alive.

He doesn't question though. He forces his revulsion away, tries to quell the fear he has about having something to lose and he does what he always does.

~~~

The doubt sets in about two weeks before Christmas. He knew it had to happen. Knew that his confidence would wane eventually.

Her returning starts to seem more remote with every hour.

The strange thing is he still doesn't doubt her. He doesn't doubt her words or that she loves him. Being with her feels like an inevitability that somehow will never happen.

He knows that doesn't make sense and he tries not to dwell on it, but it's where his mind goes and once it's there it's hard to get back. He wonders if it's more than just her needing to forgive herself, more than her needing to know she can. 

There’s a skull on his chest and rage in his bones. He has a dead wife and two dead children. Maybe that counts for all the things he hoped it didn’t.

~~~

_ There's one place left to go and in any other situation, she'd hesitate. In any other situation she'd ask him, talk it through. It’s delicate and the world could fall apart if it’s the wrong call. _

_ But he said he trusts her and he's never letting her go. _

_ And he needs to do this, even if he doesn’t know it. He needs this because she needs it, because it doesn’t work if she’s the only one putting her demons behind her. _

_ And she won't let him go either. _

~~~

It’s past midnight when he pulls out his phone, scrolls to her number.

Outside there’s a snowstorm howling through Hell’s Kitchen and even though he’s in bed under the covers he feels the cold in his bones.

He spends a lot of time staring at the screen, typing and then deleting what he’s written, trying to think of something to say that’ll convey everything he wants to.

In the end he types two words.

_ Be safe. _

It’s simple, non-intrusive and it’s all that matters. It’s all he wants.

Still his thumb hovers over the send button while he looks for a way to make the words more eloquent.

He presses down, watches the text disappear and wills himself to sleep.

_ Punishment. Forgiveness. Second chances. _

He has no messages the next morning.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, it's not finished yet. Probably one more chapter after this, but who knows? 
> 
> Thank you all again for all your kind words and support. They mean the world to me.
> 
> Please take care during this difficult time and stay safe.

_ Be safe _

_ Take care _

_ I miss you _

_ Please tell me that you’re okay _

His messages all go unanswered and he’s left frustrated and lost. 

Spiralling.

_ I love you. _

The more things change, the more they stay the same. 

~~~

He cycles through the various stages of something that resembles grief; going from hopeful to angry to sad before he finally starts bargaining with himself about what he’s allowed to do, how many messages he should send, whether he should drive past her office again. And, when nothing comes from any of his hand-wringing, he goes back to a hopefulness that feels a little more forced than before. 

The truth is she won’t leave him hanging forever - she isn't like that - and, even if she is having second thoughts, _ if _ what they have is too much and too hard and she wants to end it, she knows it deserves a proper goodbye. Two people who have been through what they have don't just fade away and fall back into their old lives without at least some kind of acknowledgement of what came before. 

The thought makes him sick to his stomach either way.

He starts avoiding Curt and David. He can't deal with their resigned smiles and sad eyes, and he knows how he sounds when he defends holding out like this. He also knows that if he was in their shoes, he would be wearing a resigned smile of his own.

It doesn't help with the loneliness though. Not much does. Not Maria's presence fluttering on the periphery of his consciousness, not Dinah's occasional encouraging messages, not the scum he puts down with extreme prejudice but little bloodlust.

They really are all just fighting not to be alone - Karen was right about that. 

She was right about everything.

~~~

He visits Maria's grave often, lays flowers across the headstone until he can’t see any grey and the whole thing is covered in bright pinks and reds.

The flowers come from a small shop on the corner of seventh and fourth, where the florist is a chic elderly woman with coiffed hair and ostentatious gold rings on every finger.

"Peonies again today? I have some red ones that came in earlier you might like," she says one chilly morning as he shakes the snow out of his hair.

“Yep, you know it.”

"Flowers every other day... one lucky lady you're wooing."

Nothing could be further from the truth but he doesn't say anything and puts a few bills on the counter.

"If you ever need anything else…" she says, and his gaze falls to a bucket of pristine white roses, their blooms full and heavy, "I've probably got it. Can even order for you if I don't."

He nods. "Thanks. But I think you've got everything I could ever need."

Roses and peonies. Life and death.

She hands him the peonies and picks up a rose, snips its stem and adds it to arrangement.

"Alright then, see you soon."

Yeah, she probably will. The only question is what he'll be buying.

~~~

_ He realises where they're going a few minutes before she'd hoped he would. _

_ "Karen, I-" _

_ He twists in the car seat, hands fidgeting at his seatbelt. _

_ "Trust me, Frank. It's okay." _

_ "No." _

_ He's shaking his head and his voice is trembling, and he looks like a frightened child. _

_ "Trust me," she says again. _

_ But he doesn't. She almost thinks he can't, and when she pulls his truck to a stop, he doesn't make any move to get out. _

_ "Come on," she says. "Let me take this." _

_ He shakes his head again. "Karen, I've been here too many times in the last couple of years and bad shit has happened every single time. Every single fucking one." _

_ She nods, takes one of his hands in her own and tilts his face up to her with the other. His eyes are bloodshot, pupils huge, and, like he did the first time she saw him in that hospital bed, he breaks her heart. _

_ "I know," she says and kisses his lips. "I know that. But you haven't been here with me." _

~~~

"I should have saved you. I should have saved all of you."

The snow falls and the marble is cold and hard.

"I should have… and I didn't, and I don't know what the hell to do with that…

"And everything I've had since then feels like something I shouldn't have been allowed to have..."

_ Except… _

Except midnight in the afternoon, twilight in the morning and hair the colour of summer falling through his fingers.

That feels like the exact thing he was supposed to have.

And it’s the best and worst of all.

There's nothing to say, nothing to do, and he trudges home through the ice and snow.

~~~

  
  


The days don't move. Christmas never seems any closer. The snow keeps falling. There's no change to its velocity or consistency and the monotony makes him lose even more time. Everything is the same. Everything is always the same and there's nothing he can do to change it.

Another drive past the _ Nelson, Murdock & Page _ offices. There's tinsel hanging in the windows and he's pretty sure he sees her asshole ex-boss' car parked outside, but he doesn't see her, and maybe that's for the best… even if it doesn't feel like it.

He eats alone in the morning at the diner and Lia flutters her eyelashes at him, and her lipstick is redder than ever.

~~~

_ He walks with her reluctantly, and even with his hand tight around hers and his boots crunching in the snow in time to her own footsteps, it feels like she has to drag him along. _

_ So she does. She has to. _

_ She told him in Fagan Corners she wouldn’t ask him about this again. At the time it made sense. At the time, despite his disagreement, it seemed like a kindness. _

_ But she’s come to realise something about kindness during the past few weeks. Something she thinks Frank has known for a long time. _

_ She’s listened to Matt and Foggy’s misgivings about the two of them. They’ve been good about it too - Matt mostly resigned and grudgingly supportive, Foggy a little more flappy and judgy about the whole thing. They ask her a lot of questions she’s already asked herself. Some she can answer - put to bed once and for all - but others she’s had to reason away. _ Excuse_. _

_ But now is not the time for excuses. _

_ The one thing Foggy asked that stayed with her was “How can you expect a man so stuck in the past to navigate the future?” _

_ She didn’t have an answer then but she thinks she might have one now. _

_ She said she wouldn’t ask him again and it seemed like a kindness. _ _But now she knows that sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind._

~~~

Something goes wrong one cold night in Brooklyn.

Dinah's asked him to look into a heroin smuggling ring that's been moving product across state lines between New York and LA. She has almost no information but she says it's following similar patterns to the scheme Rawlins and Billy had going. Her boss won't let her investigate and she needs someone willing to bend the rules for her, go places she can’t.

So he's doing that. He's _ investigating_. He's not punishing. He's not killing. He's not even really letting them know he's there. He's just looking around, asking some questions, pretending he has contacts that would be very interested in the shit on offer.

He's more careful than he's been in a while, not wanting to fuck this up for Dinah, feeling like he owes her for… well, everything.

He gets jumped anyway.

One second he's talking to a few low-level tweakers, pressing them only a little about their supply lines and waving a couple of hundred dollar bills under their noses as an incentive, and the next he's flat on his back, the wind knocked out of his lungs and a fist of brass knuckles headed for his face.

It doesn't last long. He might have been caught off guard, he might have been reckless, stupid - overconfident even - but these guys are piss poor fighters. And, less than a minute after he lands on his ass, two of them are wet stains on the concrete and the third is crying for his life, giving up the information Madani needs, promising to sing like a canary if he can avoid becoming a wet stain himself.

Frank leaves that up to Dinah when she arrives.

"Surprised you didn't kill him." 

She tries to sound affable but her voice is tense and her eyes enormous as she takes in the blood on his clothes and the bruises on his face.

"Guess I needed to keep things interesting." He's trying to stop shaking and she gives him a sharp look that tells him he’s failing miserably.

"Well not too interesting," she warns. “Too interesting is worse than boring in this line of work.”

“Depends on your perspective.”

She seems to soften a little, frown giving way to something that looks like gratitude. "Go home, Frank. Clean yourself up. Ain't gonna win Karen over when you look like that."

Yeah, maybe he isn't going to win her at all. Maybe winning isn't exactly the right way to think about all of this. Except for the fact that he is losing, and that's something.

"Thought that was a thing though?" he says, forcing a smile he doesn’t feel.

"What was?"

"Just heard that the dirtier and bloodier we get, the more you ladies like it."

"Fuck off, Castle."

He deserved that, so he takes her advice and leaves.

But later when he’s all alone and there’s no reason for bravado, he stares at himself in the bathroom mirror and takes stock of what happened.

The jump wasn’t the problem and neither was the recklessness. He’s faced far worse before and he’s come out unscathed. These are things he can see and analyse to figure out his mistakes and stop them happening again. It’s easy - simple cause and effect. 

The real problem - the one that left him shaking - is that for a split second as those brass knuckles crashed into his skull, he wondered whether fighting was even worth it. He wondered how it would feel just to let it all go.

It’s not exactly a new feeling - not in the grander scheme of things, but it’s a new one _ for now_; for _ this _time he’s had after the punishment and the forgiveness and before those second chances he wants so much it hurts.

He shakes his head, runs a hand over his scalp, and fumbles for his phone.

He has no messages and the blue light from his screen winks at him once before fading to black.

~~~

_ Central Park. _

_ Painted ponies. _

_ The carousel is covered in snow but she knows he's imagining it covered in blood. His, Maria's, Frankie's, Lisa's… and then later Billy's and Dinah's, those two poor kids working late who just happened to collateral damage. He did say Billy always had a flair for the dramatic. _

_ He stands with her arm tight around him, her body pressed up against his, and he leans heavily on her. _

_ "Tell me," she says. "Tell me everything. Tell it to me your way. _

_ “Trust me." _

_ He looks at her and swallows hard, muscle jumping in his jaw and then he drags her in close and kisses her head. _

_ "I do," he says. _

~~~

Lia leaves her number one more time. She's a little more forward this time as she collects his used dishes, hand heavy on his bicep, sharp fingernails digging into his skin as she squeezes, breast brushing his shoulder.

She smells of something heady and far too deep and dark for an early morning breakfast shift.

"I get off early on Fridays," she tells him and he inclines his head towards her. "Been thinking about trying that new Chinese place on 8th."

He purses his lips. He didn't think he'd have to do this - thought it could just be left at an ignored number on a crumpled bill. It's not like he has a lot of practice with this kind of thing, not like he's had a lot of opportunities to let anyone down easy. The last time he tried he fell in love harder than before, and while this isn't the same at all, he'd prefer not to leave a swathe of hurt feelings in his wake.

He looks at her hand pointedly.

"That's very kind of you ma'am and I'm flattered…" he starts.

"But?"

"But...” he gives her a rueful smile, “...you're barking up the wrong tree."

She shrugs, bites her bottom lip, still red as a fire truck. "Just thought if you were feeling lonely...."

He shakes his head. "I ain't lonely."

She lets go of his arm, glances at the empty seat in front of him, at his unadorned fingers, the tan line of his wedding ring long since disappeared.

"I think-" she stops, cocks her head and a tendril of dark hair falls over her cheek.

"Yeah? What do you think?"

There's no anger in her voice she speaks, and the way she's looking at him shows only the smallest hint of a bruised ego.

"I think you're the loneliest man I've ever seen."

He snorts, can't stop the smile that creeps onto his face.

"You ain't the first to think that." 

She balances her serving tray on one hip, pops the other against the side of the table. 

"So what's her name, cowboy?"

"Karen," her name slips out of his mouth more easily than it should.

"Karen…" she repeats slowly. "She sounds ... complicated."

"You got that from her name?"

She laughs. "No, I got that from you sitting here day in and day out staring out the damn window like your whole world is missing. Just need to have a pair of working eyes for that."

"Okay, fair enough, you got me."

Her smile fades a little and she regards him sadly. "Hurts a little too much doesn't it?"

There's no reason to lie, there's no reason to obfuscate. This isn't a thing and she's just his waitress.

"Yeah."

"You look like the kind of man who doesn't know what to do with hurt."

"You look like someone who thinks she knows an awful lot."

"Reading people is part of my job, it's how I make the best tips here … And I'm not wrong, am I?"

He sighs heavily. "No. No you ain't.”

"Hurting _ and _ lonely," she muses. 

"Goes hand in hand."

"Yeah… and this Karen, she takes that all away."

"She does."

"And that's why it feels like the end of the world when she's not around."

"Ain't you got some eggs to serve?" He tries to sound amiable but the edge in his voice is sharp and jagged, and she’s digging far too close to the truth.

But she doesn't flinch and her expression doesn't change.

"Look buddy, I don't know you from Adam, so I'm just gonna say it."

He sighs, sits back in the booth. 

"Hit me." He's getting advice from everyone lately, so why not a waitress in a diner that makes the best eggs in the city.

"I've seen guys like you before-"

"Have you now?" He pulls the sarcasm out of his voice as best he can, but she shoots him a dark look which tells him this isn't a laughing matter.

"Yeah, I have - even dated a couple. Lost. Lonely. And there's only one person in the world who'll fix that. Makes you go a little crazy, you see things that ain't there… makes you think the worst and it never is."

"Sometimes it is."

She shrugs. "Yeah maybe, but you can't live like that."

Except he is.

"Look-"

"Piece of advice, cowboy - got it from a friend of a friend who got it from a song or something."

"Great. I'm sure this is what I've been waiting my whole life to hear."

Her eyes flash and her red lips press into a firm unamused line. For a second he thinks she won’t say anything more and just clear his dishes away, but then she starts to speak.

"You know when you're driving and some shit happens, like you hit a patch of ice or some asshole doesn't indicate, comes flying straight for you?"

Yeah, yeah he knows. He knows all about assholes and roads and the havoc they cause.

He nods and she continues.

"And you gotta swerve. You gotta because if you don't you're gonna die. You gotta make that split second decision of where to go, how to save yourself and not make the situation worse."

"Yeah lady, I know how to drive."

She scowls, and he knows she's wondering whether he's even worthy to receive this wisdom she's so generously dishing out.

But then she takes a breath and her annoyance seems to fade.

"You need to look through the turn when you're starting to swerve..." she pauses. “And that, my angsty friend, is good advice for any big thing you’re facing.”

He takes a moment, turning the words over in his mind, and when he comes up empty he stares at her.

"What's it supposed to mean?"

"Means you sometimes have a split second and you need to see everything in that time. You need to think long term, even in the moment where long term doesn't seem like an option. You got to see the end. You have to look at what you're doing now and translate that into what it looks like on the other side - with her, without her, doesn't matter. You gotta do that for you. Can't expect it from her. _ You _ got to get there yourself. 

"See what it is on the other side that breaks you and keep going anyway, because that's what you have to do."

It hits all the places it's supposed to. Makes him feel angry and ashamed and guilty all at the same time. She knows it too, looking at him with a small degree of triumph glittering in her pretty eyes.

And he has nothing. Well, _almost_ nothing.

"You're pretty damn mouthy for someone who just served me cold coffee."

"It wasn't cold and you drink too much anyway."

She's right on both counts.

"All I'm saying is don't let your fear get the best of you. That's too damn easy."

"Might be too late."

"Nah, it ain't. You're still fighting. Wouldn't have turned me down if you weren't."

It's no use even trying to deny it and when he looks at her, her eyes are hard, and that bruised ego is a little more obvious than it was before. He decides to give her an easy way out - she deserves that much.

"So this," he jabs his finger on the bill underneath her number, "...was charity then. What did you think? 'Poor lonely piece of shit sitting here in my diner, I’d better take him on a date’ and cheer him up.”

She chuckles and the mood lightens. "I said you're lonely. I didn't say I was blind…"

"Gotta say, you almost hurt my feelings."

"Makes us almost even then."

Despite himself, he laughs too, the tension in the air evaporates long enough for her to give him an indulgent smile.

“It’s gonna be okay,” she says. “But only if you make it okay.”

He sighs, feels some of his good humour leave.

"You know… I told her once there was no light at the end of the tunnel for me, no cozy ending." 

He doesn't know why he's saying this, doesn't know why he wants her to know. All he can think is that she's a stranger with no dog in this fight, and maybe that makes it easier than it should.

"Why did you say an asshole thing like that?"

"I guess because I'm an asshole."

Lia nods as if this answer makes perfect sense. "What did she say?"

"She told me that she wanted me to have an after, to make it mean something."

"Did you?"

"I tried."

"Well maybe that was good enough."

Yeah… yeah, maybe.

Lia smiles at him, fills his coffee one last time. "You'll be okay. Karen will be okay too."

~~~

But he's not okay. He lives in a strange liminal space that allows him to both trust Karen implicitly _ and _believe that it's over and she's come to her senses, that she's just trying to figure out how to tell him and let him down as easy as she can.

These positions are mutually exclusive. He knows this and yet each one seems more real than the other.

~~~

_ Punishment. Forgiveness. Second chances. _

He buys more peonies and scatters them on her grave a hundred times.

"I wanted to save you." He tells her. "I wanted to save all of you."

The snow swirls around him, rising from the graves like ghosts.

He touches the stone.

"But sometimes we don't get second chances."

_ Sometimes we don't get forgiveness either. _

~~~

_ It's a terrible story, albeit one she knew already. Earlier she wondered if she should push him, if this might be a step too far and make him close down, but Frank has never been one to hide his pain, and after a few choked starts the words start tumbling out. _

_ He shows her where they sat with Billy, the tables now covered over to protect them from the snow. He shows her the ponies, tells her which one was Lisa's favourite, gets angry with himself when he can't remember which one Frankie rode on. _

_ "Not sure if it was the blue or the yellow." _

_ "It's okay," she says and he shakes his head. _

_ "It ain't." _

_ She puts a hand on his shoulder. _

_ "Okay, just think about it. Take your time. Don't look for it, let it come to you." _

_ "Karen- my girl-" _

_ "You're safe," she whispers. "Nothing is going to happen." _

_ She'll keep him safe. It's the least she can do after everything. _

_ He takes a breath, squeezes her hand again and looks at her with red eyes, tears welling in the corners. _

_ "Green," he says. "It was the green." _

_ "That one?" She asks pointing at the sole pony with a green saddle and decorations. _

_ "Yeah, that's the one." _

_ "Okay," she says. "Okay good." _

_ He gives her a weak smile, and she's reminded of a dog wagging its tail after a pat on the head from its owner. _

_ And then he's leading her out onto the snow, away from the tables and the shelter. _

_ The flakes catch in his hair and eyelashes, melt on his skin and she kisses them away like they’re tears. _

_ They come to a stop at a nondescript patch of slushy ground near a tree. _

_ "We had a picnic there. Billy had left by then. He said 'I don't have much, but I can afford a fucking table'... Maria and the kids thought it was really funny." He sighs. "Couldn’t stand to see his dirty work." _

_ He's quiet for a very long time and then suddenly he turns to her. _

_ "How could I have been so wrong, Karen? How could I not have seen it? The click of the hammer - I missed that, I took too long… but… but…" he's breathing is ragged and the panic in his voice is almost tangible and he sinks to his knees. "Billy… I spent every goddamn day with him. I knew him. I knew him through and through. He spent every holiday with us… I knew him like a brother, and Maria and the kids - they loved him-" _

_ And there it is. That's what she's been waiting for. The guilt, the shame, the self-flagellation he's been doing for years now. _

_ It's his wound. The one that she can't see on his skin, that she can't trace, but the one she needs to heal all the same. _

_ She lowers herself into the snow next to him, puts her arms around his shoulders and pulls his head to breast. He grabs at her, fingers sinking almost painfully into her through her coat. _

_ Hands through his hair, lips to his temple. _

_ "It's okay," she whispers. "It's okay, you can let it go now." _

For you. For me. For us.

~~~

He wonders if he should pray, if it's something you can pick up again after more than a decade of neglecting it. He thinks you can. There's all that shit about grace and forgiveness and coming back to the fold. But he also knows enough about the Bible and the wrath and fury of a deity scorned.

At worst He takes your whole family away, at best He simply doesn't talk to strangers anymore.

And Frank _ is _ a stranger. Maybe now more than ever.

~~~

_ He tells her a lot of things. It's mostly garbled stories she's heard before, but she lets him speak and the thread of self-loathing and blame is thicker and harsher than ever. _

_ He should have known. He should have seen through Billy and his charming smiles. He should have trusted his gut when it came to Rawlins and he was a fool for not seeing what Schoonover was. It's his fault. He's to blame. He's not what he thought he was. He's not as good at this as he thought and he doesn't deserve second chances. _

_ He never did. _

_ And she holds him and listens to him and plants kisses on his head, and eventually, when the air is frigid and the sky is turning dark, he stops and pulls her close, mouth finding hers. _

_ He kisses her, heavy and desperate and if Frank were any other man and this were any other place she thinks he'd take her right here. But that's never been him and it's not them either. He's a gentleman, good, decent, chivalrous - a protector. _

_ "You do deserve second chances," she says into his mouth. _

_ “I don't but I want that with you anyway.” _

_ “Then it’s yours,” she says. _

And so am I.

  
  


~~~

He has one final showdown in an abandoned apartment block near an industrial sector of the city. He's wondered before just how many of these damned decrepit buildings there are, wonders why someone doesn't do something about it. But then he thinks about Wilson Fisk and he knows why.

He's helping Dinah again although she's told him not to. She’s good at reading him and after the last time, she's been adamant about him steering clear of what she's doing. But Curt… Curt is something else entirely, barely able to shut up about her and what she's doing, worrying constantly about the shit she gets herself into and his own disadvantage when it comes to looking after her. Frank gets it. It's one thing to have a woman who can kick your ass, it's quite another to know she's employing those skills to save her own life on a regular basis. At best it makes you worry, at worst it tears you up inside.

He thinks of Karen and her .380, hard determination in her eyes as she pointed it at him, finger flexing on the trigger; of Schoonover forcing her into the car; of Lewis and his fucking bombs; of Fisk; of the bullets she put in James Wesley's chest. He thinks of all the times he should have protected her.

So when Curt told him that Dinah was still having trouble with the drug cartel and the red tape was becoming a bit too suffocating - that there were too many leaks, and some asshole mobster was getting a little too close for comfort, he didn't need to be asked twice. 

He never really does.

He put on the chest piece, took his weapons and headed out to the seediest part of an already seedy city - the part where those unfortunate to have to drive past speed up and the streets are deserted from about three in the afternoon.

And maybe again, he overplayed his own hand.

He wasn't expecting the asshole to have wired the place, wasn't expecting him to set off an explosion, and he sure as shit wasn't expecting the roof to cave in and for them both to fall a good 30 feet down to the second floor.

He's getting slow. He's getting so very slow.

But there’s not really time to worry about that right now.

He’s pinned to the ground, leg stuck under a beam that fell when the ceiling collapsed. His chest piece is lying somewhere in the rubble, his gun lost along with it. There's a fire raging - smoke filling the air and flames licking up the wall where part of the stairs has caved in - and a man twice his size is towering over him, swinging his arm up in a high arc, blade sharp as obsidian and glinting in the heat.

He strikes out with his free leg - a clumsy, badly timed kick that connects with the man's hipbone rather than ribcage. It's not enough to stop the swing, but it knocks him off course, the knife grazing Frank's ear, clanging against the concrete. 

He's too slow to knock it away though, body prone and the angles all wrong, and he's stuck grabbing at wrists and awkwardly wrestling to keep the steel away from his eyes.

And again there's that moment - miniscule and fleeting but bright as the sun. 

_ Let it happen. Stop fighting. Stop hurting. _

He twists away from the tip of the knife, free leg kicking frantically at the beam, which doesn't splinter and doesn’t budge.

_ Just give in. Let it go. _

He brings his elbow up between them, pushing at the man's sternum, trying to gain enough momentum to wind him, but again the angles are wrong and the space too small and it barely buys him a second.

_ It could all be over now. All the hurt and the doubt. All the pain. _

He wonders if Maria is still waiting for him on the other side. She hasn't made her presence known - no pretty flower dresses, no radiant smiles. She isn't asking him to come home. 

It really shouldn't matter if she is.

_ There's no point to this anymore. All those grand plans were for nothing. _

Except maybe he still has that second chance at a second chance.

Does he though? Maybe that tweaker or mob boss would put him out of his misery.

The blade is coming down again, the arc perfectly timed, perfectly aimed for his throat, but the beam has shattered and his leg is free, and if he wanted to he could move… if he _ wanted _ to.

If it was _ worth _ it.

_ ("You know when you're driving and some shit happens…”) _

_ (“Karen, she sounds complicated”) _

_ (“Ain’t you got some eggs to serve?”) _

_ (“...like you hit a patch of ice or some asshole doesn't indicate”) _

_ (“Yeah lady, I know how to drive”) _

_ (“I’ve seen guys like you”) _

_ (“You almost hurt my feelings”) _

_ ("You look like the kind of man who doesn't know what to do with hurt.") _

(_ "And you gotta swerve.”) _

_ ("You're pretty damn mouthy for someone who just served me cold coffee.") _

_ (“You gotta because if you don't you're gonna die.”) _

_ (... “you’re gonna die”) _

_ (“What’s that supposed to mean?”) _

_ (... “you’re gonna die”) _

_ (... “you’re gonna die”) _

_ (... “you’re gonna die”) _

_ (“You gotta look through the turn. See what’s on the other side that breaks you.”) _

He looks.

He looks and he sees himself on the other side when this building is long gone and the man above him consumed by the flames.

He's alone. Karen is gone. Maybe she's with Murdock, maybe not. The point is she isn't with him. And he's spiralling. He's back where he was those first few weeks after Maria died. His heart is in pieces, and his world isn't worth living in and he's trying to kill it hard enough to make it make sense again. 

He's alone. He's alone and hurting.

_ (Look through the turn.) _

He's not alone. Karen is there. She's kind and smart and the most beautiful girl in the world. She loves him and he keeps her safe. So very safe. She's everything. She's his whole world. But the smile on her face doesn't reach her eyes and sometimes when she looks at him, there's a sadness that he can't quite define. She worries, teeth chewing on her bottom lip, turning it red, staining it with blood. He wants to ask why, but he already knows. 

He's not alone but he may as well be. He’s alone and hurting.

_ Look through the turn. See what’s on the other side that breaks you. _

And it’s so simple. So obvious.

It's not the blood on his hands or the rage in his bones. It's not the violence that comes to him easier than breathing.

It’s him. It’s him and the spiralling vortex he’s become - that black hole that opens up inside him when the world doesn’t make sense anymore.

That black hole that she can’t be expected to keep closed. Those moments of clarity always do come from the strangest of places.

His head hits the floor and the world explodes into stars.

_ Goddamnit you fool, she needs something she knows she can go back to. Something she can trust. She told you that herself. She needs you strong, not some weak basketcase that'll throw everything down the drain the second it becomes tough. This isn't on her. Don't put it there. That's not a second chance for her. It's a prison._

_ You need to live. But more than that you need to want to. _

He brings his knee up hard and fast and it connects with soft flesh and then hard bone.

The man above him gasps, veers to the side, and Frank grabs a piece of the concrete rubble and swings it hard against his skull.

He's not dying today. He's not dying for a long time.

~~~

_ They're cold and wet when they walk back to the truck, but his arm is around her and his steps aren't heavy. He's loose too - spent - and the tension she's come so used to seeing in his shoulders is gone. _

_ "You okay?" She asks and when he nods, she can't help the sigh of relief that forces its way out of her lungs. _

_ She wasn't sure this was the best thing to do, even if it needed to be done. There were so many voices telling her it was a bad idea that she nearly backed out. But underneath all that was a fundamental truth. She owed it to him. She owed it to _them_ and to what they are trying to build. _

_ Just like she had to, he needed to see the parts he needed to leave behind. _

_ She thinks he's started. She thinks the only way now is forward. _

  
  
  


~~~

  
  


When it's over, he lies on his back staring at the night sky, breathing in the smell of blood and smoke while the snow falls through the ceiling and covers him.

It's okay. He's okay.

He looked through the turn. He saw the other side. He made it okay.

It's strangely quiet despite the flames raging behind him and the sound of wood splintering and cracking.

The heat from the fire burns him but the snow falls cold and heavy on his face, melting on his skin and washing away the blood and soot like tears.

_ Be better. _

He understands now. He _ gets _ it. After all this time, all these loops and all the spiralling, all the meanings are clear.

Somewhere in the distance the church bells ring and it sounds like they get closer with every passing second until they're so loud and heavy that their clanging seems to fill him up from the inside, coursing through his blood, his skull, until it feels like it'll shatter in his head.

And maybe that wouldn't be so bad. Maybe that bullet in his brain is like a pebble against a glass window, pressing inwards slowly as little cracks become bigger and bigger until the whole thing falls apart. Maybe it's time to say goodbye to the _memento mori._

The tolling gets louder, the bells almost frantic, building up to some kind of terrible crescendo that makes him hold his head, double over in pain.

He wants to scream, but there's no room in the whole world for anything but the bells and the horrific melody they're using to engulf the whole city, maybe the world beyond.

He covers his ears, head about to split, bones cracking.

And then...

And then silence.

And then Maria, her voice firm and sweet.

_ Go on. Go to her. _

  
  



	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are - finally. This is the second last chapter, the last one will be posted tomorrow or maybe Monday at the latest. It's written and edited, but just needs another read through, so I am hoping it doesn't take too long and I don't find anything terrible in it.
> 
> Thank you all again, I can't believe what this story has become - it was never meant to be more than a one-shot, but here we are, tens of thousands of words later.
> 
> I hope you enjoy.

St Jude's is lit up like a beacon, its grey and sombre walls enveloped in a golden glow which shines so brightly it casts light right out into the city.

Someone’s decorated too: small lanterns glimmer in the trees, while fairy lights and poinsettias lie strewn across the arches and in the windows, garden torches illuminating the path to the doors. Even the gargoyles and imposing marble statues haven’t escaped the festivities and swathes of holly and red berries are twisted around the cold stone. The falling snow looks like pixie dust. 

It’s over the top - ridiculous, to the point of kitsch - but Frank can’t find it in himself to disparage it. It brings people joy, and that in itself is enough.

He stands silently in the shadows, trying to decide if he should feel happy or simply annoyed with himself for being so blind for so long. The world kept circling the sun and Christmas arrived when he wasn't looking; time moved just as it was supposed to and the only one missing out and being an over-dramatic asshole was him. 

He doesn’t need to but he checks his phone anyway.

December 23rd. 

The sole thing not moving forward was him and that’s not even the slightest bit surprising.

_ Go on. Go to her. _

He looks up towards the light. The priest - Frank never did get his name, despite attending his services for the best part of a year - stands on the steps outside the cathedra where he welcomes the parishioners. When he catches sight of Frank, there's a faint flicker of recognition in his eyes but it's gone quickly, and he turns away to greet an elderly woman with purple tinted hair and a bright red beret that doesn’t seem the least bit out of place among all the other brilliant colours.

It’s a small thing, but he feels a twinge of melancholy at the oversight, the lack of recognition at a place that’s inadvertently become such a distinct part of his life. It’s only fitting though - he never really belonged here and the Catholic Church for all its faults and foibles was never the place he would find some sense of place of purpose, no matter how hard he looked. It was a stepping stone, a means to an end and not the end itself.

But it is the end now - one way or another - and that’s fitting too.

Inside the vestibule, candles flicker and cast an orange shine against the walls, inviting him in where it's warm and safe and the world is calm. He thinks of other candles - tea lights - and how their flames turned her hair red and her skin into silver. He thinks of how everything hurt so exquisitely back then - and how it still does now.

The bells toll again. Loud. Discordant. Thunderous even. 

Despite everything they’ve given him, he never did like their sound.

The priest checks his watch and moves out of the doorway and inside the building and the parishioners stop their loitering and follow him.

It's time. 

It's time for the start and end of everything.

~~~

_ He’s quiet on the drive back to her apartment. Not angry or hurting, but contemplative - reflective even - as he watches the snowflakes fall outside. _

_ She doesn’t push him. He knew when to back off with her and when to stand firm and, while their ways of dealing with grief and other emotions that feel too big to keep inside are very different, she’s content to let this sit until he wants to make something more of it. _

_ Besides, she’s pushed enough. So has he. _

_ The streets are dark and empty, covered in snow, with ice glittering on the sidewalks. It should feel harsh and unfriendly, lonely even, but Frank’s warm, stoic presence at her side tells an entirely different story. _

_ The truth is she couldn’t have thought of a better Christmas. Him and her in her bed. Nothing but days and nights of an intimacy so intense, she still can’t believe it’s real. It’s always been like that with them though; it  _ is  _ them - her belief makes no difference one way or another _

_ Next year will no doubt be trickier. Foggy will definitely be doing something, so will Dinah and Curt, and she doesn’t think her and Frank will be left to their own devices again even if invitations from her friends come with baggage and conditions. Excuses won’t be tolerated and no one will be nearly as understanding as they were this year. And that’s only the easiest aspect of all this. Other things will be much harder. By next year they will have had to find some way to navigate the world with one another, to live in each other’s lives and be The Punisher and the woman who loves him. It’s not going to be easy, but it is going to be. _

_ But now -  _ right  _ now with him here beside her, his hand resting almost casually on her thigh - it doesn’t matter where they are or what they do. There will never be another time like this.  _

_ It’s both a good and a bad thing. _

_ “Is this what it felt like for you?” _

_ His voice is low, gravelly, and against the silent backdrop of Hell’s Kitchen and her own raging thoughts, it startles her a little. _

_ He always did know how to disarm her, find pathways into her heart she didn’t know existed. Apparently he’s not done yet, but then again, neither is she. _

_ “I think so,” she turns left into her street, her building looming purple and blue in the night sky. “It’s the same - it doesn’t go away or change - but it’s still different. Feels new, even though you know it’s old.” _

_ He bobs his head and glances out the window again. “Yeah.” _

_ “You don’t have to be able to explain it. I can’t. Don’t think I ever will.” _

_ “But you’re good with it now? With what happened to you back then? You’re okay?” _

_ The question is so simple, so obvious, but it hits her like a ton of bricks. _

_ They’ve spent so much time talking and learning and figuring things out - asking the big questions like what forgiveness looks like and who decides; what scars are the deepest and how much hurt is too much. But he’s never asked her about how she’s getting on now, about Kevin and her father and all the things that Fagan Corners threw at them.  _

_ Not like this. Not so direct. _

_ She parks the truck, kills the engine and leans over, kisses him long and slow and deep and soon her hands are in his hair and his lips are on her throat, and the world is disappearing outside the steamy window. _

_ “I’m okay as I can be,” she says between kisses. “Okay as I need to be.” _

_ He pulls back a little, lips wet and cheeks ruddy, but even so his frown is more obvious than his lust. _

_ “What’s that mean?” _

Oh god, it doesn’t mean anything. _ _

_ She covers his hand with hers, drags it up her thigh, until his fingers brush against the crotch of her jeans. For the first time the last thing she wants to talk about is  _ meaning _ . _

_ “It means if you take me inside and warm me up, I’ll be better than I am.” _

_ She says it playfully, a smirk on her lips and a twinkle in her eye, but he’s not laughing, and when she meets his gaze, his eyes are hard and his jaw set in a straight line. _

_ “You don’t need to be better. You just need to be you.” He purses his lips. “You know that, don’t you?” _

_ She swallows hard, nods once. She’s forgotten how he gets, how earnest he can be, and how frustrated he becomes when she doesn’t see the same things in herself that he does. _

_ For a second he looks like he’s about to push a little harder, drag things out longer and force a conversation on them both that they’re still too emotional to tackle properly. But then his frown fades into a grin that’s sly and sweet as he unclips her seatbelt, leans in and runs his tongue across her throat. _

_ “Okay, now let’s go get you warmed up.” _

  
  


~~~

He searches for her, for that flash of strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes shining like sapphires, but even as the crowd thins, it's difficult to focus on the shadows, difficult to make one person out from the next. 

Slowly but surely the parishioners move past him, and an usher closes one of the double doors and waves the stragglers inside. Even the carolers stop their singing and head indoors too, shoulders hunched against the snow.

They look happy - in fact everyone looks happy. It must be that Christmas cheer, it has the power to make everything seem better and worse at once.

It's beautiful. It's everything it should be. 

He sighs as the last person steps inside and the door closes, leaving him outside alone and in the cold. There's a familiarity to it, an underwhelming resolution to an expectation he should never have had. He doesn't know why he thought tonight would be any different. He's had these so-called epiphanies before; these moments when he's been so sure of her and of them and God or fate or whatever the fuck aligns the stars, and he's inevitably been disappointed. This time was no different.

Hands in his pockets and he turns, heads to the gate. There's no point in lingering. No point in torturing himself anymore by heading up to the gallery, sitting there with nothing but dashed hope and loneliness so sharp he can taste it.

He guesses all looking through the turn really means is that there  _ is  _ something to see on the other side. Whether he likes it or not is immaterial.

He’ll have to live with that too.

As he passes the statues and the lanterns, he notices a woman hurrying up the path towards him. She’s checking her phone frantically and her dark hair is flapping under a striped woollen hat.

She pays him no heed until he's almost past her, and then suddenly she pivots, boots crunching on the icy stones.

"Frank?" She calls. 

He stops, a small shiver of shame going down his spine as he recognises her voice.

“Frank, oh my god, is that you?”

He turns slowly, knowing what’s waiting for him, and plasters a not entirely fake smile on his face.

"Ella?"

She looks completely different to the last time he saw her. She’s smiling and her eyes are sparkling, cheeks are full and red and healthy. But more than that her demeanour is different. While she's still small and a little skittish, she has the gait and poise of someone getting used to their own skin, someone living in it, rather than trying to escape it.

"I thought it had to be you," she says and the joy in her voice is unmistakable.

She takes a step towards him and then, seemingly at a loss for what to do next, she pulls him into a quick, awkward hug that feels all kinds of wrong and right at the same time.

"How are you? Where's…" he stops, realising that he never got her baby's name, and trying not to think about how Karen looked holding it.

"Gabby… Gabrielle," she says and he nods. "Oh, she's doing great. She's with my mom and my dad tonight."

“Really?”

He raises his eyebrows and she smiles a little sheepishly. 

"You guys were right, my family was willing to let things go… I was lucky. A lot of people aren't."

"Yeah," he says, but before his thoughts drag him back down that dark hole that was Fagan Corners, she smiles widely.

"They love her. They just want to look after her and take care of her."

"That's great," he says. "That's really great."

"They want to take care of me too." She lets that settle for a while and then her smile fades a little.

"Ain't that a good thing?"

"Yeah. Yeah of course it is." She sighs and looks away. 

"You sure?"

"Yeah, I'm just-” she shakes her head, “Oh god it feels weird to be telling you this when I don't even know you but…"

"It's okay. I ain’t gonna judge."  _ I’m getting really good at that lately. _

She takes a deep breath, regards him warily for a second before she speaks.

"I filed for divorce on Friday. Went and got the papers drawn up and everything."

He doesn't say anything, isn't really sure what the correct response is in this situation. Commiseration is false and congratulations insensitive, but then she nods.

"For the best," she says. "I know it is. It’s just… it’s just he's just going to be so angry."

Yes, he is. Guys like Wayne don’t need shit to be angry about at the best of times, but this is just going to justify whatever long-held rage is already there.

"He gives you any trouble, any at all-" he starts and she nods again.

"I know,” she blinks rapidly. “I know... and thank you."

They stand there quietly in the snow for a few long moments, and then she smiles brightly again.

"I have an interview in the new year. It's just for something small, just answering phones and admin, but it's something, you know."

Yeah it's something. It's more than something.

"Sometimes that's all we need… something small."

Someone to listen. Someone to love. Somewhere to be.

"Yeah, we do…" she trails off, looks away into the street as she collects her thoughts. "You know, Frank, strange thing is, that night that everything happened… I was so scared and I just wanted everything to stop and it felt like the worst time in my whole life and I don't ever want to go through that again, but it also showed me things couldn’t carry on like they were.  _ I _ couldn’t carry on like I was. It might just be the best thing that ever happened to me… to Gabby too. 

"Weird how that is - how good things come out of the worst things."

"Sometimes our moments of clarity come from the strangest of places."

She nods, chews the inside of her cheek, and then suddenly behind him the church bell tolls once more and she looks up.

"I'm sorry," she says. "Look at me babbling on and on, when the service has already started. I need to get inside and you're probably in a rush to get to Karen."

Yeah, he was. He's not sure where he is with that now.

He shakes his head. "That 's okay, Karen ain't really around anymore."

He doesn't like the way the words sound together. Heavy, ugly, like some kind of badness that's only made real by voicing it.

Ella frowns again. 

"Sure she is. I just saw her. Outside the gate. She’s waiting for you." 

She delivers it like it’s not news, like it’s not life-changing and she hasn’t just turned the world inside out and upside down. She may as well be telling him that a new movie has opened or that she’s a Yankees fan, the weather report says the mercury is going to drop tomorrow and he might want to wear a scarf.

In fact, she’s still talking. Saying something about needing to stop in at the store after the service and going to fetch her sister, wishing him a Merry Christmas and hoping that next year is better than the last. He hears snatches of it, disconnected ideas that seemingly have no meaning or context, and when he tries to answer - tries to find some way to counter her earth-shattering revelation - his mouth refuses to form the words and the sounds he makes are unintelligible.

“...hope you both have a…”

“...don’t keep her waiting…”

“...cold out…”

“...better than last…”

“...running late…”

_ Go on. Go to her. She’s waiting for you. _

None of what she’s saying makes sense. But she sounds so sure, he finds himself struggling to see the error, the falsehood. There’s no reason to lie, no reason to hurt him like that and yet somehow he knows she is. After all he's been here before. He's had these moments of hope so real and tangible it seems like there's no possible way he could be let down. 

So no it's not that he doesn't believe, it's that he doesn't want to.

But then he's been doing a lot of things he doesn't want to, and Ella is turning and pointing to the street outside and he can't help it, he's following the line of her arm, eyes travelling up the path, towards the gate, heart already crashing with the inevitable disappointment as he waits to see how the universe intends to trick him this time.

But there's no trick. There's no subterfuge or false starts.

Karen is there, washed in moonlight that turns her silver again, her hair streaming behind her in the wind, and snow falling on her like stardust. She is  _ there _ . And she's smiling at him, head cocked and arms folded, and there's a moment that he thinks his knees might buckle, that he'll fall to the cold hard stones and he'll never be able to get up again.

In the back of his broken mind he thinks he couldn't have chosen a better venue for that.

_ She’s waiting for you. _

He doesn't fall. He doesn't buckle either. Instead his hands shake and his breath comes out in short, hard gasps.

Vaguely, he's aware of Ella touching his arm, saying goodbye and heading to the cathedral.

And then there's just him and Karen and the falling snow, and the world of hurt and blood that brought them together.

And none of that matters.

~~~

_ He carries her up the stairs to her apartment. She’s not expecting it but the second she steps outside the truck he swings her into his arms and heads for the front door, mumbles something she doesn’t quite catch about dress blues and Curtis and a boombox. _

_ “I can walk, you know? And I have an elevator and everything. We’d get there faster.” _

_ He shakes his head. _

_ “No, don’t need it to be fast. Need it to be right.” _

_ She laughs as her boots bump against the railing. “Right for who? You when I break your arms or me when I break my legs after you drop me?” _

_ “Come on, I ain’t gonna drop you. You know that,” he says pressing his lips to hers and making her shiver. “Ain’t ever gonna drop you.” _

~~~

They meet somewhere in the middle of the courtyard, the echo of their footfalls fading as his hands slide into her hair.

She’s breathless as she says his name, and the snow catches on her lashes and melts down her cheeks like tears.

He knows he must look the same.

"You were waiting for me," she says.

It’s not a question. But then again it never was. He would wait forever for her if she asked him. 

He wants to tell her -  _ needs  _ to - but the words choke him as he tries to force them out. 

She doesn’t even notice.

Her arms snake around his waist and her mouth arches over his, tongue hot and sweet on his lips, and he doesn't need words anymore.

~~~

_ They take their time - or he does at least. She’s left breathless and squirming - whining even - as he undresses her exquisitely slowly, running his hands and his mouth over every inch of her with that same painful focus he gives to everything he deems important. _

_ Her impatient pleading is ignored, save for the rare moments she catches a sly grin quirking at the corner of his mouth or the heavy hand on her thigh or belly when she tries to move. _

_ He’s still an asshole when it comes to this. She wouldn’t have him any other way. _

~~~

He’s not sure how long they stay there. There’s starlight and snow and the air is frigid on his skin and he doesn’t care about any of it.

She’s here and time has lost meaning again in the most wonderful way. 

Her mouth is hard on his, fingers trailing over his face, over his cheekbones, through the scruff of his beard, and the smell of her is filling him up until he feels like he’s floating and drowning all at once.

He’s saying her name over and over but she swallows the sound and arches into him and suddenly he’s grabbing at her too, fingers digging deep into her hips and thighs.

She’s back. He’s home and the world makes sense in a way it hasn’t for a really long time.

~~~

He remembers nothing about the drive to her apartment - not the route he took, not whether there was traffic on the streets, not whether the snow fell or the moon shone. 

There’s so much he wants to tell her, so many things he wants to say but his tongue still feels thick and clumsy and the words escape him the second he thinks he has them. 

The only thing he’s truly aware of is her: her fingers curling around his knee, her chin tucked against his shoulder and the warm patch on his neck where her breath tickles him. And then his heart thumping in his chest like a tattoo on a broken drum and the blood in his head hot as magma.

They barely make it inside her front door. Somewhere between her frantic kisses and his frantic hands her coat is already half off her shoulders and his shirt mostly unbuttoned before they’re even halfway down the hall; and it takes all his willpower to fumble with the lock and her keys and get them both into her apartment and out of the cold.

And then she’s everywhere, hands on his arms, his face, his hips, fingertips like whispers across his chest, his belly. Lower. 

He’s caught up in it too, walking her backwards until she hits the wall, her coat discarded impatiently on the floor, and her jeans already hanging off one leg as she levers herself up into his arms, legs tight over his hips.

“Like this?” he asks and she nods, mouth coming down hard on his again, teeth scraping over his tongue as he tries to unclip his sidearm and put it on the bookcase.

“Like this.” she whispers as he shivers. “Exactly like this.”

_ Exactly like this. _

_ Exactly. _

_ Except maybe... _

He reaches between them, cupping her between the legs. She’s hot and slick and his hand comes away wet and sticky, but when he brings his fingers to his lips and makes to fall to his knees, she grabs at him again, shaking her head.

“Now,” she says. “Not later. Now.”

A million thoughts go through his head: snappy responses and ways to tease her, make her angry and get her into more of a state than she’s already in. He could do it. He could slow this down, turn it sly and subtle, lose himself in the taste of her until she’s whimpering and pleading

But he’s starting to understand that sometimes - just  _ sometimes  _ \- when Karen Page wants something, he doesn’t get a say. Nor should he even expect one. 

It’s a shockingly comfortable realisation to have.

His hips snap against hers - a moment of absolute terror as he almost loses his balance and sends them both tumbling to the floor - and then he’s spreading her open with his fingers, thrusting upwards and she’s bracing herself on his shoulders, tightening her thighs around his waist.

“Now,” she says again. “Right now.”

Yes, right now and all the nows after this one.

  
  


~~~

_ The moonlight casts shadows on their skin, horizontal dark lines on silver across her belly. It bounces off his fingernails too where he’s pressed his hands into her splayed thighs, holding her open as he licks her with firm, hard strokes. _

_ She’s shaking, legs quivering and hands knotting in his hair. She’s hurting him - she must be - because every now and then he lets out a small yelp as she tugs at him. _

_ He’s still being slow, still painfully methodical, and it’s left up to her to arch and squirm, rock her hips upwards as far as he will allow her. _

_ And it’s not far. His hands are heavy on her, giving her only a negligible amount of room to move, and he’s in no hurry to drive her off the edge. _

Don’t need it to be fast. Need it to be right.

_ She falls back against the pillows and gives herself up his shadows. _

~~~

He loses time - he thinks she does too.

There’s the darkness and the moonlight, the swish of a cat’s tail against his naked ankle and then there’s her and him and a tangle of limbs, a flash so bright it almost blinds him as he comes.

She’s gasping, begging, and somehow he stays standing, forehead pressed into her shoulder as he wedges a hand between them, circles her clit in hard tight spirals that are entirely out of synch with the slow, weak thrusts of his hips.

Somehow it works anyway. She arches backwards, shoulders and skull bumping against the wall, stiff nipples pressing into his chest as she growls his name and her nails scrape down his back.

She might have drawn blood. If she has he can’t think of a better way to bleed.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are - finally. 
> 
> I never expected to write this much for this little fic, but I am so glad I did. I am also happy to see the end of it. I really like that feeling of completeness and I hadn't had that in a while.
> 
> I'll be returning to my other fics shortly, so there will be more from me.
> 
> Thank you to everyone who sent kudos and comments on this fic - I appreciate them all. They mean the world to me and I just want to hug every single one of you for the time you spent to write to me.
> 
> Please let me know what you think of this. It's always tricky wrapping things up because you always wonder if you've done enough, and I hope I have. This was never going to be the type of story to end with a bang and it feels like we have been in the denouement phase for a while now - but maybe that's where we should have been.
> 
> Thank you all again - this has been great.

The bells are tolling again. They sound strangely musical - like some kind of melody or a tune he can’t quite remember. Somewhere in some universe, in a lifetime that isn’t his, the church service is over and the parishioners, having paid their respects or done their penance, are going home. 

After all those times he felt like an outsider in their midst, at least now he has that much in common with them.

He has a chance of a home too. 

But it’s not the bells that bring him back to himself, not any clever thoughts about belonging, but rather the sharp sound of a match striking, the gentle roar of a flame.

He’s sitting on her couch, naked from the waist up, jeans undone pushed down below his hips. He’s not sure how he got there, but an overturned table and a few books scattered across the floor between him and the door tells him enough of the story that he can fill in the blanks. As can the heavy ache in his thighs and the sweet sated feeling in the pit of his belly.

“You good?” she asks as she lights candles, and he nods as he zips himself up, squints at her in the dim light.

She's changed into a black satin negligee which barely reaches her thighs, hair cascading around her shoulders and that blue bracelet glimmering at her wrist.

It’s all for him. All of it.

“Yeah. Now. I’m good _ now _.”

A knowing smile flits across her face as she blows out the match and she turns away to pick up two crystal glasses of red wine from the kitchen island.

“Glad to hear it,” she says sitting down next to him, slim thigh brushing his as she clinks their glasses together.

She’s quiet for a while, lost in thought as she sips her wine. He runs his hand through her hair, traces the line of her arm with his fingertip. She shivers and then turns to him and starts her own exploration: a bruise on his shoulder, the cut across his bicep, the graze on his knuckles. 

If he closes his eyes he can still smell the fire, feel that concrete block in his hands as he decided to save his own life.

"What were you doing?" Her voice is low and he senses a change from in her tone, the playfulness gone as something darker and more serious takes its place.

_ Dying. Living. Looking through the turn. _

There’s still so much to do, so much to say and they both know that no perfect moments of excruciating pleasure can erase that.

He rubs his thumb over the crease of her elbow. She’s soft as silk and he has to stop himself from pressing his lips to the skin there.

“I guess…” he says and then stops to consider - this isn't simple, it's not straightforward, and yet somehow after everything it's the easiest thing in the world. "I guess I was doing what I always do. Like you told me to.”

“And what’s that?”

She always asks so much with so little. But somehow those words that stuck in his throat earlier have been dislodged and they come pouring out of him.

“Looking for forgiveness, finding a place where the world makes sense and I can live in it without guilt…" 

He touches her cheek, and her eyes flash - something in them he can't quite define. Understanding maybe. But then maybe something darker too. Something like shrewdness. 

It doesn't matter. It shouldn't. She's exquisite like this. Bathed in candlelight and shining like the stars. 

"I guess that's something we're all just doing."

"Yeah," he smiles. "Maybe I've been doing it my whole life. Even… even before… before Maria, but maybe that was something else. Maybe that was me wising up and trying a get out of jail free card… doing my time before I needed to "

She cocks her head. "What do you mean?"

He's being cryptic. Almost deliberately so. He hadn't really wanted to tell her this - at first it seemed irrelevant and then in Fagan Corners when she begged him for forgiveness he couldn't give, it seemed cruel. But now… now things are different. 

_ Better. _

_ Be better. _

He runs a hand up her thigh, relishes the gooseflesh that rises on her skin, and then stands and walks to the window, stares out at the city and can just make out the steeple of the cathedral in the fog.

"I wanted to be a priest once," he says without looking at her. "Went to catechism and everything."

Behind him he hears her gasp but it doesn't deter him. This feels ridiculous to say. Unbelievable almost. But he’s safe. With her he’s always safe.

"Me?” he chuckles. “A priest. Granting absolution. Demanding penance. What a goddamn joke."

Outside the bells start ringing again. Not quite midnight mass, not quite Christmas Eve, but close. Close enough, and he senses more than hears her taking a step towards him.

"Father Francis Castiglione."

He snorts. It's really funny when she puts it like that. Him, the man who has probably killed more people than anyone else in the city, pretending to be a man of the cloth. Anyone should be able to see how insane that is.

And yet… and yet there's something in it that makes sense. After everything they've been through, something in it is both a confession and a promise, a plea for mercy lost somewhere in between.

Or maybe not.

She is Karen Page, after all - and he, well he is just a man.

"Yeah," he shakes his head."You believe that?"

The thing is he knows before he's even said it that she does. It's something in the way she's looking at him like he's a puzzle and she's just figured out how she needs to solve it. 

Karen Page was always too damn smart for him.

Still, he fights it, pushes it away.

"Goddamn joke."

Except it's not.

"Not so funny, I believe it."

Of course she does. And when she does, so can he and he doesn’t like it at all.

Still, he persists. “You could see me in one of those robes? Little white collar?”

_ Say no. Please say no. _

But she’s never been one to tell him what he wants to hear.

“Maybe.”

He frowns. It feels too big for this moment, too open with too many possibilities and he wants to close the door on it, stop that downward spiral into all the “what ifs” even if he doesn’t know why. She’d know why - he knows that - but he doesn’t have the heart or the balls to ask her.

“Nah.” he forces a smile onto his face. “I’ll leave the sermons to Red. Give him that much at least.”

She looks like she might have something to say to that, some way to force them back into the conversation, but she stays quiet, sipping her wine as she joins him at the window.

He kisses her hair, breathes in her scent.

“Stay here with you,” he says as the bells quiet down. “Don’t need anything else.”

She makes a small non-committal sound in the back of her throat and he knows she doesn’t believe him. It doesn’t matter. It’s the truth and he’s going to spend the rest of his life proving it to her.

And, as she runs her lips over his throat and goosebumps rise on his skin, he thinks she’s just given him a very good place to start.

“Make it mean something.”

He already has, but he’ll keep doing it until she believes him. He’ll keep doing it until it means everything.

Her lips taste like wine and the world fades under his fingers.

~~~

He wanted to be a priest once.

He wanted to be a lot of things.

Father. Husband. Marine.

Murderer.

_Punisher._

He looks to where Karen lies asleep next to him, golden hair turned silver and streaming across the pillows.

_ Lover. _

He’s been all of these - even a priest in some twisted way - with varying levels of success and too many failures to mention. 

But there’s always those second chances, and he has to decide what the other side looks like. Maybe not now. Maybe not tonight. But soon. Very, very soon.

He needs to be better. The spiral needs to end.

He leans over, kisses her neck and shoulder and she moans softly in her sleep, stretches a little.

“I love you,” he whispers, “I love you more than I ever thought I could. And I’m never letting you go.”

~~~

_ She loses count of how many times he sends her over the edge before he rises up above her, lips slicked with her and shining wet in the light. _

_ All she knows is she’s somehow both exhausted and craving him more than she ever has before. _

_ “Please,” she whispers but it barely sounds like a word so she stops trying to speak and rocks her hips upwards, parting her thighs further. “Please Frank.” _

_ “I know,” he says. “I got this. We’ll get there...” _

_ It takes her a second to parse his words, drag the meaning out of them. _

_ “Frank - I... ” _

_ But the glint in his eyes tells her everything she needs to know. _

_ He grabs both of her wrists in one hand and lowers his mouth back to her cunt. _

  
  


~~~

_ He eventually leaves her lying loose and languid on her bed, staring up at the ceiling. _

_ It surprises her that he gets up because he’s spent too, his breathing still heavy and his skin covered in a sheen of sweat. Usually he likes to lie with her, quiet and thoughtful, his fingers drawing patterns on her skin as he presses his lips to her hair. _

_ She wonders if as well as tiring him out over the past few nights, she’s talked him out too. All these questions of forgiveness and penance, of scars and wounds that will never heal have to end sometime. Maybe they’re nearing the point when it’s time to start looking forward instead of back. _

_ At least they’ve laid the groundwork for that. She’d like to think they’ve had a head start. _

_ In the distance, church bells. She checks her watch. December 25th, 7pm. Time for prayers. For Mass. For forgiveness and second chances. It’ll be quiet after tonight as people fall back into their routines after the silly season is over. Sure, the cathedral will still be there and it’ll still hold it’s Sunday sermons and maybe both she and Frank will feel that twinge of longing. But for the most part, it’s over. Whatever grace there was to find, has been found. _

_ Forward. Forward instead of back. _

_ She rolls to her side, breathes deeply. She can smell him on her pillow, on her sheets, but mostly on her - her hair, her skin, between her thighs. It feels right. And she doesn’t want to feel wrong anymore. _

_ Sleep tempts her briefly. Nicodemus comes to snuggle and the apartment is warm and cozy and it would be so easy to just give into it, wake up tomorrow morning with Frank in her arms, see what the new day holds for them, but she wants to wait for him now, feel the press of his body on hers as she drifts off, hear the nonsense he whispers in her ear. _

_ But he doesn’t come, and after a while she can’t hear him either. The apartment is dark and quiet save for Nicodemus’ sleepy purrs and, for a second, she wonders if she somehow got this all wrong and Frank’s left. Maybe it was too much, maybe they pushed too hard, maybe he’s overwhelmed in the worst possible way. _

_ The thought leaves before it’s even fully formed. _

_ She slips out of the bed and pulls on a pair of leggings and a warm sweater, thick fuzzy socks on her feet. _

_ She steps out of the bedroom into the living area. It’s lighter here, the moonlight cascading in through the window, casting long shadows across the floor, over the couch and kitchen island. _

_ He’s not here and his coat isn’t on the rack, his boots not by the door either. _

_ He wouldn’t have gone out without telling her, and even if he had, there would be nowhere to go. Nothing’s open save for St Jude’s and she’s fairly certain he feels about it the same way she does. _

_ She stands a moment, frowning, glancing around the apartment, half expecting to see him hiding in the shadows, but there’s nothing. And then her gaze falls on her bracelet sitting on the coffee table and she knows where he is. _

_ She picks it up, slips it on her wrist and goes to hover at the window, studies his still form sitting on the fire escape, snow catching in his hair and on his shoulders. His cheeks are wet and she knows it’s not the snow or the ice, but he doesn’t bother to wipe at them or rub his eyes. _ _ His back is bent and he’s holding his wedding ring dangling on the end of a chain, running his finger along the inside of the band over an engraving she knows she’ll never read _

_ There are some things that aren’t for her. They aren’t for them. And there are some things that aren’t for Maria either. She thinks it’s only fair that they accept it. _

_ She squares her shoulders and steps outside into the snow. _

~~~

_ He slips the ring into his pocket and wraps his arm around her shoulders as she sits down. He’s warm and solid and she snuggles closer, burying her face in his throat, lips resting against his pulse. _

_ The snow is light for now, but the air is frigid and icicles cling to the stairs and railings, shining like bright gems in the cold light. It’s not wise to stay out here for too long for so many reasons, but they have a little time, and this is important. _

_ For a while they don’t talk. He rubs her shoulder, presses his lips to her temple, but his eyes are open and there’s a small thoughtful frown on his face. _

_ They’ve done this before - this exact thing when they sat on her fire escape and contemplated the magnitude of what was happening between them before he decided it was too big and too real and that ultimately he loved her enough to leave her. _

_ And then he didn’t. _

_ Things are different now though. It’s a year later and they’re a year older. Maria’s been gone for a year longer and Kevin’s smile is more difficult to remember. _

_ Frank isn’t running away and neither is she and his kisses taste like her instead of blood. _

_ And yet… and yet there’s still something that makes it feel like last Christmas, a stone in the pit of her belly that reminds her of how it felt when he left, came back and left again. It’s not that she thinks it’ll happen again, it’s just that she knows it already did. _

_ “Today was good. I needed it,” His voice is a low rumble and she kisses his neck. “Thank you.” _

_ “I think maybe I should be thanking you.” She squeezes his thigh and he snorts. _

_ “Not what I meant.” _

_ “I know.” _

_ He runs his fingers over her hand, circling her wrist and turning the bracelet around it, and then he smiles and shakes his head. _

_ “What is it?” _

_ He sighs, a pristine white puff of air coming out of his mouth and disappearing into the night. “Last year I didn’t give this to you because I thought it wasn’t good enough but really it was that I wasn’t good enough. _

_ “Murdock is a good man. Decent. He’s all those things you should have.” _

_ “No it’s not true.” _

_ “It is. You know that,” he stops for a while, breathes in heavily. “But I’m getting better…You know that too.” _

_ Yes, she does. It’s easy to see, and it’s not all her or the day they have just had. He’s been better for a long time now - longer than she has. _

_ He sighs and arches his back, and his joints crack as he rolls his shoulders. _

_ She looks out across the city - she’s blessed with having something of a view - at the snow topped buildings and that slight glimmer of the Hudson, which she wouldn’t know was there if the letting agent hadn’t laboured the point when she came for a viewing. _

_ It all seems so different now, and yet somehow it’s all exactly the same. _

_ “I do know that,” she says resting against his shoulder again. “And you’ve proved it more than you need to.” _

_ “Maybe.” He shrugs. “Ain’t no reason to stop trying.” _

_ He’s right about that. It’s true for both of them. _

_ They sit in silence for a moment. He’s thoughtful, nodding to himself as if he’s finally understood something very complicated, and then he shifts closer to her and holds her very tightly, lips against her temple. _

_ “What about you? We’ve spent all day dealing with my shit-” _

_ “Hey,” she says. “That’s not _ all _ we’ve been doing.” _

_ “Don’t do that,” he says sternly. “Don't joke. You know what I mean. Ain’t like we left things all tied up in a bow back in Vermont.” _

_ No, they didn’t. They didn’t do that at all. She guesses when they decided not to lie to one another it included things like this as well. They weren’t going to evade or distract either. _

_ “No I suppose not. But we spent a lot of time on my shit before - a lot of time.” _

_ All those nights and days, that cold excursion out to every single place that still hurts her. _

_ “You followed me across states - you stayed with me for weeks. That counts for…” her voice cracks and she looks around searching for the right word as if it’s hiding somewhere in the inky night sky. “Everything. It means _ everything _ .” _

_ “I know,” he says, pulling away slightly so he can look at her. “But that was then. But what about now? Where are you now?” _

Right here with you. Right where I should have been all along.

_ Except she knows that’s not quite true. _

_ When she left her reasons for doing so were sound. They still are. It was so easy to believe she was good and loved and worthy of forgiveness when he was telling her those things all the time. It’s even easier when she remembers that he lives and breathes judgment and punishment and somehow deemed her worthy of escaping that. _

_ But it’s been less easy over the last few weeks when she’s alone and the doubts set in. It’s less easy when her demons are loud and love is silent. _

_ The cold light of day is always starker than the moonlight. _

_ She leans forward, rests her elbows on her knees. The cold is almost overwhelming and his hand, heavy on her back feels like the only warmth left in the world. _

_ He’s owed the truth, if nothing else. _

_ “I’m not over it,” she says slowly. “You don’t get over something like that. I don’t think you should. _

_ “You said it yourself, these things - they make us who we are. They mould us and give us the foundations of who we become, the choices we make… but they never go away. They’re always there.” _

_ His hand moves across her shoulders, fingers twitching. _

_ “So what do you do with it?” _

_ “You give it space. You find a place to put it where it can just exist and you change what you need to to let it fit. Fighting it doesn’t help. Neither does beating yourself up about it,” She wipes at her eyes. “I learnt that much at least during this time. I thought I wanted to be apart so I could be all shiny and new for you, but I found out very quickly that’s not how it works.” _

_ “You don’t need to be shiny and new for me. You just need to be you.” _

_ He’s a gift. A wonderful, terrible, frightening gift. He’s the worst and the best of everything and she wouldn’t change it for the world. _

_ Apparently neither would he. _

_ She lays a kiss across his lips, cold hands framing his face. _

_ “You get it though? There’s no escaping what we’ve done, there’s no turning back the clock and taking the pain away. There’s no forgiveness either - not in the way people like you and me want there to be. There’s no absolution and no heaven.” _

_ His breath stutters in his chest and he nods. “I know.” _

_ “There’s only this,” she lifts his hand to her mouth, kisses his knuckles. “Only now. And all the time we have left.” _

_ The moonlight glimmers and the snow falls and for a moment the whole world is silent and still. And then his arms are around her and he’s holding her so tight she can barely breathe, face pressed into her hair and cold tears mingling with hers and wet on her cheeks. _

_ “Only the second chances,” He says into her skin. “Only you and me.” _

Forever. Until kingdom come.

_ ~~~ _

_ At the window, Nicodemus chirps and arches his body against the glass. He’s tired and looking for a warm body to sleep next to, and she can’t say she doesn’t feel the exact same way. It seems like they’ve been outside for hours and even though she is warm inside, she knows that the cold is settling into her bones and they’re risking flu or pneumonia if they stay here too long. _

_ She turns to Frank, plants a kiss on his head. _

_ “I’m going in now. I’d like you to come home too.” _

_ He flinches a little at the word ‘home’ and she’s not entirely surprised. She flinched a little too. These second chances take a bit of getting used to. _

The people like us - the blessed and the damned - belong together.

_ But he smiles and despite his red eyes and tear-stained cheeks, it’s big and genuine. _

_ “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.” _

_ “I think I can handle a minute.” _

_ She could handle longer as well, but they don’t have to. There’s now and nothing else except forever. _

_ Another kiss on his head and steps inside, shooing Nicodemus from the door and then heading to the kitchen island to start the coffee machine and heat up some leftover apple pie. _

_ She hums to herself as she waits, plays with Nicodemus’ tail as he prowls around the living room, squeaking and purring before rolling onto his back with his belly in the air. _

_ It’s cozy in here and, as she looks around the apartment with his gun lying on the bookcase and his empty wine glass on the coffee table, she realises that the word “home” held more truth to it than she imagined. It is home. _ She _ is home. _

_ The coffee machine gurgles and the microwave pings, the smell of cinnamon and cloves filling the space. Next year she’ll decorate. They’ll get a Christmas tree, hang some mistletoe from the ceiling. She’ll kiss him underneath it and they’ll snuggle on the couch. She’ll wrap up a gift for him in shiny paper and bake his favourite dessert. _

_ They have time. They have meaning. They have each other. _

_ She goes back to the window and stands in the shadows, waiting for him for the last time. _

_ As she expected, he’s still sitting hunched over, back bent, head down. But his shoulders are shaking and he’s scrubbing at his eyes. _

_ Crying maybe. Or laughing. It’s all the same anyway. _

_ And it’s not for her and there’s nothing she can do. _

_ But then he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his wedding ring and holds it up to the light. It glints and shimmers, shining brightly against the red and purple bruises on his hands. _

A rosary … crimson beads that shine like drops of blood.

_ He presses his lips to the metal and squeezes his eyes shut, sobs once and then goes still as a statue, the wind making his coat billow and the snow catching in his hair. _

_ Husband. Father. Punisher. Priest. _

_ He slips the ring back into his pocket, and pushes himself to his feet, stares out across the city for a long moment before turning to look at her. _

_ He nods once. _

_ A final toll of church bells as he steps inside and into her arms. _


End file.
